Bits & Bites

The proliferation of modern programming languages which seem to have stolen countless features from each other sometimes makes it difficult to remember which language you're using. This guide is offered as a public service to help programmers in such dilemmas.

C
You shoot yourself in the foot.

C++
You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical care is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying, "that's me, over there."

Objective-C (NeXT)
You write a protocol for shooting yourself in the foot so that all people can get shot in their feet.

Ada
If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front of a firing squad, and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at his feet."

or

After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type.

Algol
You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is esthetically fascinating, and the wound baffles the adolescent medic in the emergency room.

Pascal
The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.

APL
You hear a gunshot, and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to understand what happened.

or

You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to do it with fewer characters.

Assembly
You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight.

or

You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot.

BASIC
Shoot self in foot with water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.

Visual Basic
You'll shoot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun doing it that you won't care.

COBOL
USEing a COLT45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, then place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER, and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. Check whether shoelace needs to be retied.

DBase
You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowly that by the time your foot feels the pain you've forgotten why you shot yourself anyway.

DBase IV version 1.0
You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun was a poorly-designed grenade and the whole building blows up.

Forth
yourself foot shoot.

FORTRAN
You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-processing ability.

Modula 2
After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in the language, you shoot yourself in the head.

sh, csh, etc. You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five hours reading man pages before giving up. You then shoot the computer and switch to C.

Smalltalk
You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your workstation, and makes you develop in COBOL on a character terminal

PL/I
You consume all available system resources, including all the offline bullets. The DataProcessing\&Payroll Department doubles its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes, and drops the original one on your foot.

Prolog
You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet, failing to find its mark, backtracks to the gun which then explodes in your face.

or

You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.

SNOBOL
You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).

or

If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.

lisp
You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...

scheme
You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds... ...but none of the other appendages are aware of this happening.

Paradox
Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.

Revelation
You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.

English
You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off.

.CLIPPER
You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that ou can shoot yourself in the foot, and discover that the gun that the bullet fits has not yet been built, but should be arriving in the mail \_REAL\_SOON\_NOW\_.

SQL
You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and when it returns, it has a hole in it, but will no longer fit the attachment at the end of your leg.

370 JCL
You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.

Concurrent Euclid
You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.

HyperTalk
Put the first bullet of the gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.

Motif
You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.

If a packet hits a pocket
on a socket on a port
And the bus is interrupted
as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory
makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket
has an error to report!!

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
Then the situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash!

YOU CAN'T SAY THIS? WHAT A SHAME SIR!
WE'LL FIND ANOTHER GAME SIR

If the label on the cable on the table
at your house,
Says the network is connected to
the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel
on another protocol,
That's repeatedly rejected
by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted
by the side effects of gauss
So your icons in the window are
as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and
go out with a bang,
'Cause as sure as I'm a poet,
the sucker's gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy's
getting sloppy on the disk
And the microcode instructions cause
unnecessary risc,
Then you have to flash your memory and
you'll want to RAM your ROM
Quickly turn off your computer and
be sure to tell your mom!

Anonymous

At a recent computer software engineering course in the US, the participants were given an awkward question to answer.
"If you had just boarded an airliner and discovered that your team of programmers had been responsible for the flight control software how many of you would disembark immediately?"
Among the ensuing forest of raised hands only one man sat motionless. When asked what he would do, he replied that he would be quite content to stay onboard.
With his team's software, he said, the plane was unlikely to even taxi as far as the runway, let alone takeoff. 

try the following unix command ... (ofcourse in one line )...

echo '[q]sa[ln0aln100%Pln100/snlbx]sb1033326882658483656632857989327567857000snlbxq' | dc 

A typical day in the life of a UNIX user: unzip touch finger strip mount yes core dump umount sleep 

You know you are addicted to the Internet when...

You find yourself typing "com" after every period when using a word processor.com
You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
You start introducing yourself as "Jon at I-I-Net dot com
Your wife drapes a blond wig over your monitor to remind you of what she looks like.
All of your friends have an @ in their names.
You can't call your mother...she doesn't have a modem.
Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.
You laugh at people with 2400 baud modems.
You move into a new house and decide to Netscape before you landscape.
You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.
You tell the cab driver you live at &lthttp://123.elm.street/house/bluetrim.html
Your spouse makes a new rule: "The computer cannot come to bed."
You ask a plumber how much it would cost to replace the chair in front of your computer with a commode.
You start tilting your head sideways to smile.
You turn on your computer and turn off your spouse.
Your spouse says communication is important in a marriage...so you buy another computer and install a second phone line so the two of you can chat.
You begin to wonder how on earth your service provider is allowed to call 200 hours per month "unlimited."
...And the #1 clue that you are addicted to the Internet is...
Your dog has its own home page.

Beatles songs for the computer age

Eleanor Rigby

Sits at the keyboard
And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream

Waits for a signal
Finding some code
That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?

Guru MacKenzie
Typing the lines of a program that no one will run Isn't it fun?
Look at him working,
Munching some chips as he waits for the code to compile Where is the style?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?

Eleanor Rigby
Crashes the system and loses 6 hours of work What is it worth?
Guru MacKenzie
Wiping the blood off his hands as he walks from the grave Nothing was saved.

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?

Nowhere Man/Unix Man

He's a real UNIX Man
Sitting in his UNIX LAN
Making all his UNIX .plans
For nobody

He's as wise as he can be
Programs in lex, yacc and C
UNIX Man, can you help me
At all?

UNIX Man, please listen
My printout is missin'
UNIX Man
The wo-o-o-orld is your 'at' command

Let It Be

When I find my code in tons of trouble, Friends and colleagues come to me,
Speaking words of wisdom:
"Write in C."

As the deadline fast approaches,
And bugs are all that I can see,
Somewhere, someone whispers:
"Write in C."

Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
LOGO's dead and buried,
Write in C.

I used to write a lot of FORTRAN,
For science it worked flawlessly.
Try using it for graphics!
Write in C.

If you've just spent nearly 30 hours Debugging some assembly,
Soon you will be glad to
Write in C.

Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, yeah, Write in C.
Only wimps use BASIC.
Write in C.

Write in C, Write in C
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
Pascal won't quite cut it.
Write in C.

Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, yeah, Write in C.
Don't even mention COBOL. 

In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate prank kept alive for over 20 years.

Speaking at the recent UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following:

"In 1969, AT&ampT had just terminated their work with the E/Honeywell/AT&ampT Multics project. Brian and I had started work with an early release of Pascal from Professor Niklaus Wirth's ETH labs in Switzerland and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and power. Dennis had just finished reading 'Bored of the Rings', a National Lampoon parody of the Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics environment and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating environment.

We looked at Multics and designed the new OS to be as complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users' frustration levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more risque allusions. We sold the terse command language to novitiates by telling them that it saved them typing.

Then Dennis and Brian worked on a warped version of Pascal, called 'A'. 'A' looked a lot like Pascal, but elevated the notion of the direct memory address (which Wirth had banished) to the central concept of the language.

This was Dennis's contribution, and he in fact coined the term "pointer" as an innocuous sounding name for a truly malevolent construct. Brian must be credited with the idea of having absolutely no standard I/O specification: this ensured that at least 50% of the typical commercial program would have to be re-coded when changing hardware platforms. Brian was also responsible for pitching this lack of I/O as a feature: it allowed us to describe the language as "truly portable".

When we found others were actually creating real programs with A, we removed compulsory type-checking on function arguments. Later, we added a notion we called "casting": this allowed the programmer to treat an integer as though it were a 50kb user-defined structure. When we found that some programmers were simply not using pointers, we eliminated the ability to pass structures to functions, enforcing their use in even the Simplest applications.

We sold this, and many other features, as enhancements to the efficiency of the language. In this way, our prank evolved into B, BCPL, and finally C.

We stopped when we got a clean compile on the following syntax:

for (P("\n"),R-P("|"))for(e=Ce-P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("|"+(*u/4)%2)

At one time, we joked about selling this to the Soviets to set their computer science progress back 20 or more years.

Unfortunately, AT&ampT and other US corporations actually began using Unix and C. We decided we'd better keep mum, assuming it was just a passing phase. In fact, it's taken US companies over 20 years to develop enough expertise to generate useful applications using this 1960's technological parody.

We are impressed with the tenacity of the general Unix and C programmer. In fact, Brian, Dennis and I have never ourselves attempted to write a commercial application in this environment. We feel really guilty about the chaos, confusion and truly awesome programming projects that have resulted from our silly prank so long ago."

Dennis Ritchie said: "What really tore it (just when ADA was catching on), was that Bjarne Stroustrup caught onto our joke. He extended it to further parody, Smalltalk. Like us, he was caught by surprise when nobody laughed. So he added multiple inheritance, virtual base classes, and later ... templates. All to no avail.

So we now have compilers that can compile 100,000 lines per second, but need to process header files for 25 minutes before they get to the meat of "Hello, World".

Major Unix and C vendors and customers, including AT&ampT, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, GTE, NCR, and DEC have refused comment at this time.

Borland International, a leading vendor of object-oriented tools, including the popular Turbo Pascal and Borland C++, stated they had suspected this for a couple of years.

In fact, the notoriously late Quattro Pro for Windows was originally written in C++. Philippe Kahn said: "After two and a half years programming, and massive programmer burn-outs, we re-coded the whole thing in Turbo Pascal in three months. I think it's fair to say that Turbo Pascal saved our bacon". Another Borland spokesman said that they would continue to enhance their Pascal products and halt further efforts to develop C/C++.

Professor Wirth of the ETH institute and father of the Pascal, Modula 2 and Oberon structured languages, cryptically said "P.T. Barnum was right." He had no further comments.

by Scott Adams (scottadams@aol.com)

I get about 100 e-mail messages a day from readers of my comic strip "Dilbert." Most are from disgruntled office workers, psychopaths, stalkers, comic-strip fans -- that sort of person. But a growing number are from women who write to say they think Dilbert is sexy. Some say they've already married a Dilbert and couldn't be happier.

If you're not familiar with Dilbert, he's an electrical engineer who spends most of his time with his computer. He's a nice guy but not exactly Kevin Costner.

Okay, Dilbert is polite, honest, employed and educated. And he stays home. These are good traits, but they don't exactly explain the incredible sex appeal. So what's the attraction?

I think it's a Darwinian thing. We're attracted to the people who have the best ability to survive and thrive. In the old days it was important to be able to run down an antelope and kill it with a single blow to the forehead.

But that skill is becoming less important every year.

Now all that matters is if you can install your own Ethernet card without having to call tech support and confess your inadequacies to a stranger whose best career option is to work in tech support.

It's obvious that the world has three distinct classes of people, each with its own evolutionary destiny:

Knowledgeable computer users who will evolve into godlike non-corporeal beings who rule the universe (except for those who work in tech support).

Computer owners who try to pass as knowledgeable but secretly use hand calculators to add totals to their Excel spreadsheets. This group will gravitate toward jobs as high school principals and operators of pet crematoriums. Eventually they will become extinct.

Non-computer users who will grow tails, sit in zoos and fling dung at tourists.

Obviously, if you're a woman and you're trying to decide which evolutionary track you want your offspring to take, you don't want to put them on the luge ride to the dung-flinging Olympics. You want a real man. You want a knowledgeable computer user with evolution potential.

And women prefer men who listen. Computer users are excellent listeners because they can look at you for long periods of time without saying anything. Granted, early in a relationship it's better if the guy actually talks. But men use up all the stories they'll ever have after six months. If a woman marries a guy who's in, let's say, retail sales, she'll get repeat stories starting in the seventh month and lasting forever. Marry an engineer and she gets a great listener for the next 70 years.

Plus, with the ozone layer evaporating, it's a good strategy to mate with somebody who has an indoor hobby. Outdoorsy men are applying suntan lotion with SPF 10,000 and yet by the age of 30 they still look like dried chili peppers in pants. Compare that with the healthy glow of a man who spends 12 hours a day in front of a video screen.

It's also well established that computer users are better lovers. I know because I heard an actual anecdote from someone who knew a woman who married a computer user and they reportedly had sex many times. I realize this isn't statistically valid, but you have to admit it's the most persuasive thing I've written so far.

If you still doubt the sexiness of male PC users, consider their hair. They tend to have either: (1) male pattern baldness -- a sign of elevated testosterone -- or (2) unkempt jungle hair -- the kind you see only on people who just finished a frenzied bout of lovemaking. If this were a trial I think we could reach a verdict on the strong circumstantial evidence alone.

I realize there are a lot of skeptics out there. They'll delight in pointing out the number of computer users who wear wrist braces and suggest it isn't the repetitive use of the keyboard that causes the problem. That's okay. Someday those skeptics will be flinging dung at tourists. Then who'll be laughing? (Answer to rhetorical question: everybody but the tourists.)

Henry Kissinger said power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. And Bill Clinton said that knowledge is power. Therefore, logically, according to the U.S. government, knowledge of computers is the ultimate aphrodisiac. You could argue with me -- I'm just a cartoonist -- but it's hard to argue with the government. Remember, they run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, so they must know a thing or two about satisfying women.

You might think this was enough to convince anyone that men who use computers are sexy. But look at it from my point of view: I'm getting paid by the word for this article. I'm not done yet.

In less enlightened times, the best way to impress women was to own a hot car. But women wised up and realized it was better to buy their own hot cars so they wouldn't have to ride around with jerks.

Technology has replaced hot cars as the new symbol of robust manhood. Men know that unless they get a digital line to the Internet no woman is going to look at them twice.

It's getting worse. Soon anyone who's not on the World Wide Web will qualify for a government subsidy for the home-pageless. And nobody likes a man who takes money from the government, except maybe Marilyn Monroe, which is why the CIA killed her. And if you think that's stupid, I've got 100 words to go.

Finally, there's the issue of mood lighting. Nothing looks sexier than a man in boxer shorts illuminated only by a 15-inch SVGA monitor. If we agree that this is every woman's dream scenario, then I think we can also agree thatit's best if the guy knows how to use the computer. Otherwise, he'll just look like a loser sitting in front of a PC in his underwear.

In summary, it's not that I think non-PC users are less attractive. It's just that I'm sure they won't read this article.

1.Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free.
2.Product is tested. 20 bugs are found.
3.Programmer fixes 10 of the bugs and explains to the testing department that the other 10 aren't really bugs.
4.Testing department finds that five of the fixes didn't work and discovers 15 new bugs.
5.See 3.
6.See 4.
7.See 5.
8.See 6.
9.See 7.
10.See 8.
11.Due to marketing pressure and an extremely pre-mature product announcement based on over-optimistic programming schedule, the product is released.
12.Users find 137 new bugs.
13.Original programmer, having cashed his royalty check, is nowhere to be found.
14.Newly-assembled programming team fixes almost all of the 137 bugs, but introduce 456 new ones.
15.Original programmer sends underpaid testing department a postcard from Fiji. Entire testing department quits.
16.Company is bought in a hostile takeover by competitor using profits from their latest release, which had 783 bugs.
17.New CEO is brought in by board of directors. He hires programmer to redo program from scratch.
18.Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free.

When asked about a bus schedule, you wonder if it is 16 or 32 bits.

When you are counting objects, you go "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D...".

When you dream in 256 pallettes of 256 colors.

When your wife says "If you don't turn off that damn machine and come to bed, then I am going to divorce you!", and you chastise her for for omitting the "else" clause.

You try to sleep, by executing sleep(8 * 3600) // sleep for 8 hours

When you are reading a book and look for the scroll bar to get to the next page.

When you pick up the phone and start dialling an IP number...

When you get in the elevator and double-click the button for the floor you want.

When not only do you check your email more often than your paper mail, but you remember your {network address} faster than your postal one.

When you look for a icon to double-click to open your bedroom window.

When you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you're doing the math in octal.

When you look for a trash can icon for throwing garbage.

When you want to know somebody's whereabouts and you wish you could finger him.

When your car engine goes bust on the freeway, deep inside a wood, and you try to find the reset button.

while seaching for a pair of socks in a laundry-bag, you carry out depth first search.

when you try to find the backspace key on your piano.

when you think of replacing your old toaster with newer version called version 3.2.

when the brakes of your car fail and you think of the halting problem.

when you want to deque the que in front of the ticket window.

when you sing lullaby to your daughter which goes " Shutdown -h now...".

When you read the news of a car collision and think of retransmitting

% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

% got a light?
No match.

% sleep with me
bad character

% man: Why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% rm God
rm: God nonexistent

% man woman
No manual entry for woman.

% man ' automatic insertion'
No manual entry for automatic insertion.

% make 'heads or tails of all this'
Make: Don't know how to make heads or tails of all this. Stop.

% make sense
Make: Don't know how to make sense. Stop.

% make mistake
Make: Don't know how to make mistake. Stop.

% make bottle.open
Make: Don't know how to make bottle.open. Stop.

% \(-
(-: Command not found.

% rm -i God
rm: remove God? y
% ls God
God not found
% make God
Make: Don't know how to make God. Stop.

% make light
Make: Don't know how to make light. Stop.

% date me
You are not superuser: date not set
Thu Aug 25 15:52:30 PDT 1988

% who is smart
suvax1!hirayama tty12 Aug 25 15:04

% man rear
No manual entry for rear.

% If I had a ) for every dollar Reagan spent, what would I have?
Too many )'s.

% * How would you describe George Bush *: Ambiguous.

% %Vice-President
%Vice-President: No such job.

% ls Meese-Ethics
Meese-Ethics not found

% "How would you rate Reagan's senility?
Unmatched ".

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

% ^How did the^sex change operation go?
Modifier failed.

% cp /dev/null sexchmod 000 sex

% more sex
sex: Permission denied

% mv sex show

% strip show
strip: show: Permission denied

% who is my match?
No match.

% set i="Democratic_Platform"mkdir $ichmod 000 $ils $i
Democratic_Platform unreadable

% awk "Polly, the ship is sinking"
awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: bailing out near line

% %blow
%blow: No such job.

% 'thou shalt not commit adultery'
thou shalt not commit adultery: Command not found.

And from the bourne shell (sh):

$ drink < bottleopener
bottle: cannot open
opener: not found

$ test my argument
test: too many arguments

$ "Amelia Earhart"
Amelia Earhart: not found

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense no sense in pretending!

$ man -kisses dog
dog: nothing appropriate

$ mkdir "Yellow Pages"fiYellow Pages
$ mkdir mattercat matter
matter: cannot create

$ lost
lost: not found

$ found
found: not found

$ i=Hoffa $i $i rm $i rm $i
Hoffa: cannot execute
rm: Hoffa nonexistent

The following are ones that I can't get to work on my BSD 4.3, so I suppose that they are stuff from ATT SysV or some other such:

% strip bra
bra: Cannot open

% sccs what bottle
can't open bottle (26)

$ cat "door: paws too slippery"
can't open door: paws too slippery

$ cat food_in_tin_cans
cat: can't open food_in_tin_cans

% analyze R/etc/analyze

These are ones that I couldn't get to work at all (at least so that they would make [humorous] sense):

% test without warning
test: too many arguments
% test without arguments
test: too many arguments
% test I bet five bucks you will say argument expected
test: too many arguments
 

No, Windows is not a virus. Here's what viruses do: They replicate quickly - okay, Windows does that.

Viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so - okay, Windows does that.

Viruses will, from time to time, trash your hard disk - okay, Windows does that too.

Viruses are usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems. Sigh... Windows does that, too.

Viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow (see 2) and the user will buy new hardware. Yup, that's with Windows, too.

Until now it seems Windows is a virus but there are fundamental differences:Viruses are well supported by their authors, are running on most systems, their program code is fast, compact and efficient and they tend to become more sophisticated as they mature.

So Windows is not a virus.

It's a bug.

After the Hugh Grant incident, Bill Gates called up Grant and asked him, "Was it really worth $50 to almost ruin your career?"
Grant replied, "Bill, it was so good, it was actually worth a million!"

So Bill went ahead and called up Grant's favorite prostitute. Since she had become famous, her price had gone up quite a bit, but Bill went ahead and shelled out $10,000 for a night with Divine.

In the morning, he had to admit that Grant was right. He said, "Wow! That was fantastic! Now I know why, professionally speaking, you call yourself 'Divine'!"

She answered, "Why thank you. And now I know why, professionally speaking, they call your company 'Microsoft'!";

Now that I've lived to see this day,
These are the things I must but say.

Die a spinx, if your options're few,
Never ever love a programmer, they'll make a program out of you.

Don't laugh it away, mine has been an object lesson,
They find syntax errors, even in a romantic expression.

Alas! they search logic in love, where there is none,
Your heart may skip a beat and they just hit return.

You are in for trouble if you persist,
You'll just be a pointer in a long linked list.

They would never oblige you even with a smile,
And if smile come to their lips, they consign it to a file.

They have little regard for your amorous approaches,
Plight will be yours, infinite loops & blunderous goaches.

You are bitten by different bugs, though love it may appear,
Just when you think you're going steady, you'll get run time error.

And if your beloved may be a programmer in COBOL,
May God be with you for they are the worst of them all.

Sticklers for standards, you'll have a rough time,
You'll die of keeping tabs, in your youth prime.

Beauty and brain together, which was never meant to be,
They have them both and are for sure deadly.

And yet there are Heros who's love has made history,
But why their fates didn't hang is still a mystery.

So follow my advice if in me you have any trust,
Wait for the day when the handsome becomes an analyst.

For the first time in, oh, a decade, I think, something from Microsoft shipped on time: Jennifer Katharine Gates, weighed 8 pounds 6 ounces when she was downloaded, er, born on Friday, April 26 at 6:11 p.m.

And what do Baby Gates and Daddy's products have in common?

Neither can stand on its own two feet without a LOT of third party support.
Both barf all over themselves _regularly_.
Regardless of the problem, calling Microsoft Tech Support won't help.
As they mature, we pray that they will be better than that which preceeded them.
At first release they're relatively compact, but they seem to grow and grow and grow with each passing year.
Although announced with great fanfare, pretty much anyone could have produced one.
They arrive in shaky condition with inadequate documentation.
No matter what, it takes several months between the announcement and the actual release.
Bill gets the credit, but someone else did most of the work.
For at least the next year, they'll suck.

If IBM made toasters ...
They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted for overnight toasting.
IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe six toasters.

If Microsoft made toasters ...
Everytime you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd have to pay for it anyway. Toaster '95 would weigh 15,000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steel countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that lets you control how light or dark you wanted your toast to be, and would secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them.
Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

If Apple made toasters...
It would do everything Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier.

If Fisher-Price made toasters ...
"Baby's First Toaster" would have a hand-crank that you turn to toast the bread that pops up like a Jack-in-the-box.

If The Rand Corporation made toasters ...
It would be a large, perfectly smooth and seamless black cube. Every morning there would be a piece of toast on top of it. Their service department would have an unlisted phone number, and the blueprints for the box would be highly classified government documents. The X-Files would have an episode about it.

If the NSA made toasters ...
Your toaster would have a secret trapdoor that only the NSA could access in case they needed to get at your toast for reasons of national security.

Does Digital (formerly DEC) still make toasters ...
They made good toasters in the '70s, didn't they?

If Hewlett-Packard made toasters ...
They would market the Reverse Polish Toaster, which takes in toast and gives you regular bread.

If Sony made toasters ...
Their "Personal Toasting Device", which would be barely larger than the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your belt.

If The Franklin Mint made toasters ...
Every month you would receive another lovely hand-crafted piece of your authentic Civil War pewter toaster.

If Cray made toasters ...
They would cost $16 million but would be faster than any other single-slice toaster in the world.

If Thinking Machines made toasters ...
You would be able to toast 64,000,000 pieces of bread at the same time.

If Timex made toasters ...
They would be cheap and small quartz-crystal wrist toasters that take a licking and keep on toasting.

If Radio Shack made toasters ...
The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you could by all the parts to build your own toaster.

If K-Tel sold toaster ...
They would not be available in stores, and you would get a free set of Ginsu knives with each one.

If the University of Waterloo made toasters ...
They would immediately spin-off a company called WatToast.

If the PQ made toasters ...
They wouldn't want to be on the same counter-top as the rest of the appliances.

Compaq is considering changing the command "Press Any Key" to "Press Return Key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "Any" key is.

AST technical support had a caller complaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.

Another Compaq technician received a call from a man complaining that the system wouldn't read word processing files from his old diskettes. After trouble- shooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, it was found that the customer labeled the diskettes then rolled them into the typewriter to type the labels.

Another AST customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes. A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with Xeroxed copies of the floppies.

A Dell technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door. The customer asked the tech to hold on, and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the room to close the door to his room.

Another Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of trouble-shooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the "send" key.

Another Dell customer needed help setting up a new program, so a Dell tech suggested he go to the local Egghead. "Yeah, I got me a couple of friends,"the customer replied. When told Egghead was a software store, the man said, "Oh, I thought you meant for me to find a couple of geeks."

Yet another Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it by filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them individually.

A Dell technician received a call from a customer who was enraged because his computer had told him he was "bad and an invalid". The tech explained that the computer's "bad command" and "invalid" responses shouldn't be taken personally.

An exasperated caller to Dell Computer Tech Support couldn't get her new Dell Computer to turn on. After ensuring the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button. Her response, "I pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens." The "foot pedal" turned out to be the computer's mouse.

Another customer called Compaq tech support to say her brand-new computer wouldn't work. She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in, and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked "What power switch?"

Bill Gates died and, much to everyone's surprise, went to Heaven. When he got there, he had to wait in the reception area.

Heaven's reception area was the size of Massachusetts. There were literally millions of people milling about, living in tents with nothing to do all day. Food and water were being distributed from the backs of trucks, while staffers with clipboards slowly worked their way through the crowd. Booze and drugs were being passed around. Fights were commonplace. Sanitation conditions were appalling. All in all, the scene looked like Woodstock gone metastatic.

Bill lived in a tent for three weeks until, finally, one of the staffers approached him. The staffer was a young man in his late teens, face scarred with acne. He was wearing a blue T-shirt with the words TEAM PETER emblazoned on it in large yellow lettering.

"Hello," said the staffer in a bored voice that could have been the voice of any clerk in any overgrown bureaucracy. "My name is Gabriel and I'll be your induction coordinator." Bill started to ask a question, but Gabriel interrupted him. "No, I'm not the Archangel Gabriel. I'm just a guy from Philadelphia named Gabriel who died in a car wreck at the age of 17. Now give me your name, last name first, unless you were Chinese in which case it's first name first."

"Gates, Bill." Gabriel started searching though the sheaf of papers on his clipboard, looking for Bill's Record of Earthly Works. "What's going on here?" asked Bill. "Why are all these people here? Where's Saint Peter? Where are the Pearly Gates?"

Gabriel ignored the questions until he located Bill's records. Then Gabriel looked up in surprise. "It says here that you were the president of a large software company. Is that right?"

"Yes."

"Well then, do the math chip-head! When this Saint Peter business started, it was an easy gig. Only a hundred or so people died every day, and Peter could handle it all by himself, no problem. But now there are over five billion people on earth. Jesus, when God said to 'go forth and multiply,' he didn't say 'like rabbits!' With that large a population, ten thousand people die every hour. Over a quarter-million people a day. Do you think Peter can meet them all personally?"

"I guess not."

"You guess right. So Peter had to franchise the operation. Now, Peter is the CEO of Team Peter Enterprises, Inc. He just sits in the corporate headquarters and sets policy. Franchisees like me handle the actual inductions." Gabriel looked though his paperwork some more, and then continued. "Your paperwork seems to be in order. And with a background like yours, you'll be getting a plum job assignment."

"Job assignment?"

"Of course. Did you expect to spend the rest of eternity sitting on your ass and drinking ambrosia? Heaven is a big operation. You have to pull your weight around here!" Gabriel took out a triplicate form, had Bill sign at the bottom, and then tore out the middle copy and handed it to Bill. "Take this down to induction center #23 and meet up with your occupational orientator. His name is Abraham." Bill started to ask a question, but Gabriel interrupted him. "No, he's not that Abraham."

Bill walked down a muddy trail for ten miles until he came to induction center #23. He met with Abraham after a mere six-hour wait.

"Heaven is centuries behind in building its data processing infrastructure," explained Abraham. "As you've seen, we're still doing everything on paper. It takes us a week just to process new entries."

"I had to wait three weeks," said Bill. Abraham stared at Bill angrily, and Bill realized that he'd made a mistake. Even in Heaven, it's best not to contradict a bureaucrat. "Well," Bill offered, "maybe that Bosnia thing has you guys backed up."

Abraham's look of anger faded to mere annoyance. "Your job will be to supervise Heaven's new data processing center. We're building the largest computing facility in creation. Half a million computers connected by a multi-segment fiber optic network, all running into a back-end server network with a thousand CPUs on a gigabit channel. Fully fault tolerant. Fully distributed processing. The works."

Bill could barely contain his excitement. "Wow! What a great job! This is really Heaven!" "We're just finishing construction, and we'll be starting operations soon. Would you like to go see the center now?"

"You bet!"

Abraham and Bill caught the shuttle bus and went to Heaven's new data processing center. It was a truly huge facility, a hundred times bigger than the Astrodome. Workmen were crawling all over the place, getting the miles of fiber optic cables properly installed. But the center was dominated by the computers. Half a million computers, arranged neatly row-by-row, half a million .....

..... Macintoshes ....

..... all running Claris software! Not a PC in sight! Not a single byte of Microsoft code!

The thought of spending the rest of eternity using products that he had spent his whole life working to destroy was too much for Bill. "What about PCs???" he exclaimed. "What about Windows??? What about Excel??? What about Word???"

"You're forgetting something," said Abraham.

"What's that?" asked Bill plaintively.

"This is Heaven," explained Abraham. "We need a computer system that's heavenly to use. If you want to build a data processing center based on PCs running Windows, then ....

..... GO TO HELL!"

When Milgrom waited at the airport to board his plane he noticed a computer scale that would give your weight and fortune.
He dropped a coin in the slot.The computer screen displayed "You weigh 88 kilos, you are married and you're on your way to California.

Milgrom stood dumbfounded.

Another man put in a coin and the computer read : "You weigh 83 kilos you're divorced and you're on your way to chicago"
Milgrom said to the man,"Are you divorced and on your way to chicago". "YES" came the reply.

Milgrom was amazed! Then he rushed to the men's room changed his clothes and put on dark glasses. He went to the machine again.

The computer read : "You still weigh 88 kilos, you are still married, and You just missed your flight to california!"
 

• You actually wore a blue ribbon to protest the Communications Decency Act.
• You kiss your girlfriend's home page.
• Your bookmark takes 15 minutes to scroll from top to bottom.
• Your eyeglasses have a web site burned in on them.
• You find yourself brainstorming for new subjects to search.
• You refuse to go to a vacation spot with no electricity and no phone lines.
• You finally do take that vacation, but only after buying a cellular modem and a laptop.
• You spend half of the plane trip with your laptop on your lap...and your child in the overhead compartment.
• All your daydreaming is preoccupied with getting a faster connection to the net: 28.8...ISDN...cable modem...T1...T3.
• And even your night dreams are in HTML.
• You find yourself typing "com" after every period when using a wordprocessor.com
• You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
• You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.
• You start introducing yourself as "Jim at I-I-Net dot net dot au
• Your heart races faster and beats irregularly each time you see a new WWW site address in print or on TV, even though you've never had heart problems before.
• You step out of your room and realize that your parents have moved and you don't have a clue when it happened.
• You turn on your intercom when leaving the room so you can hear if new e-mail arrives.
• Your wife drapes a blond wig over your monitor to remind you of what she looks like.
• All of your friends have an @ in their names.
• When looking at a pageful of someone else's links, you notice all of them are already highlighted in purple.
• Your dog has its own home page.
• You've already visited all the links at Yahoo and you're halfway through Lycos. or [C]ontinue?
• You can't call your mother...she doesn't have a modem.
• You realize there is not a sound in the house and you have no idea where your children are.
• You believe nothing looks sexier than a man in boxer shorts illuminated only by a 17" inch svga monitor.
• You check your mail. It says "no new messages." So you check it again.
• You refer to your age as 3.x.
• You have comandeered your teenager's phone line for the net and even his friends know not to call on his line anymore.
• Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.
• Even though you died last week, you've managed to retain OPS on your favorite IRC channel.
• You code your homework in HTML and give your instructor the URL.
• You don't know what sex over three of your closest friends are, because they have neutral nicknames and you never bothered to ask.
• You name your children Eudora, Mozilla and Dotcom.
• You laugh at people with 2400 baud modems.
• Your husband tells you he's had the beard for 2 months.
• You miss more than five meals a week downloading the latest games from Apogee.t, or [C]ontinue?
• You start looking for hot HTML addresses in public restrooms.
• You wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop and check your e-mail on the way back to bed.
• You move into a new house and decide to Netscape before you landscape.
• You tell the cab driver you live at http://123.elm.street/house/bluetrim.html
• You actually try that 123.elm.street address.
• Your virtual girlfriend finds a new net sweetheart with a larger bandwidth.
• You tell the kids they can't use the computer because "Daddy's got work to do" and you don't even have a job.
• Your friends no longer send you e-mail...they just log on to your IRC channel.
• You buy a Captain Kirk chair with a built-in keyboard and mouse.
• Your wife makes a new rule: "The computer cannot come to bed."
• You are so familiar with the WWW that you find the search engines useless.
• You get a tatoo that says "This body best viewed with Netscape 1.1 or higher."
• You never have to deal with busy signals when calling your ISP...because you never log off.
• The last girl you picked up was only a jpeg.
• You put a pillow case over your laptop so your lover doesn't see it while you are pretending to catch your breath.
• You ask a plumber how much it would cost to replace the chair in front of your computer with a toilet.
• You forget what year it is.
• You start tilting your head sideways to smile.
• You ask your doctor to implant a gig in your brain.
• You leave the modem speaker on after connecting because you think it sounds like the ocean wind...the perfect soundtrack for "surfing the net".
• You begin to wonder how on earth your service provider is allowed to call 200 hours per month "unlimited."
• You turn on your computer and turn off your wife.
• Your wife says communication is important in a marriage...so you buy another computer and install a second phone line so the two of you can chat.
• As your car crashes through the guardrail on a mountain road, your first instinct is to search for the "back" button.

-A quote on the SNI newsgroup.

LOVE MEANS NEVER HAVING TO REBOOT

Micro was a real-time operator and dedicated multi- user. His broad-band protocol made it easy for him to interface with numerous input/output devices, even if it meant time-sharing.

One evening he arrived home just as the sun was crashing, and had parked his Motorola 68000 in the main drive (he had missed the 5100 bus that morning), when he noticed an elegant piece of liveware admiring the daisy wheels in his garden. He thought to himself, "she looks user-friendly. I'll see if she'd like an update tonight."

Mini was her name. She was delightfully engineered with eyes like COBOL and a Prime mainframe architecture that set Micro's peripherals networking all over the place.

He browsed over to her casually, admiring the power of her twin, 32-bit floating point processors and enquired, "How are you, Honeywell?" "Yes, I am well," she responded, batting her optical fibers engagingly and smoothing her console over her curvilinear functions.

Micro settled for a straight line approximation. "I'm stand-alone tonight," he said. "How about computing a vector to my base address? I'll output a byte to eat, and maybe we could get offset later on. "Mini ran a priority process for 2.6 milliseconds then transmitted 8K.

"I've been dumped myself recently, and a new page is just what I need to refresh my disks. I'll park my machine cycle in your background and meet you inside. " She walked off, leaving Micro admiring her solenoids and thinking, "Wow, what a global variable. I wonder if she'd like my firmware?"

They sat down at the process table to a top of form feed of fiche and chips and a bucket of Baudot. Mini was in conversational mode and expanded on ambiguous arguments while Micro gave occasional acknowledgments, although in reality he was analyzing the shortest and least critical path to her entry point. He finally settled on the old, 'Would you like to see my benchmark routine?' but Mini was again one step ahead.

Suddenly she was up and stripping off her parity bits to reveal the full functionality of her operating system software. "Let's get BASIC, you RAM," she said. Micro was loaded by this stage, but his hardware policing module had a processor of its own and was in danger of overflowing its output buffer, a hang-up that Micro had consulted his analyst about.

"Core Dump," was all he could say, as she prepared to log him off.

Micro soon recovered, however, when Mini went down on the DEC and opened her divide files to reveal her data set ready. He accessed his fully packed root device and was just about to start pushing into her CPU stack, when she attempted an escape sequence.

"No, no!" she cried. "You're not shielded!"

"Reset, baby," he replied, "I've been debugged."

"But I haven't got my current loop enabled, and I can't support child processes," she protested.

"Don't run away," he said, "I'll generate an interrupt."

"No, that's too error prone, and I can't abort because of my design philosophy."

Micro was locked in by this stage, though, and could not be turned off. But Mini soon stopped his thrashing by introducing a voltage spike into his main supply, whereupon he fell over with a head crash and went to sleep. "Computers!" she thought as she compiled herself. "All they ever think about is hex." 

The committee told the programmer he had some say in the matter and asked him if he wanted to see Heaven and Hell before stating his preference.
"Sure," he said, so an angel took him to a place with a sunny beach, volleyball, and rock and roll, where everyone was having a great time.

"Wow!" he exclaimed. "Heaven is great!"

"Wrong," said the angel. "That was Hell. Want to see Heaven?"

"Sure!" So the angel took him to another place. Here a bunch of people were sitting in a park playing bingo and feeding dead pigeons.

"This is Heaven?" asked the Windows programmer.

"Yup," said the angel.

"Then I'll take Hell." Instantly he found himself plunged up to his neck in red-hot lava, with the hosts of the damned in torment around him.

"Where's the beach? The music? The volleyball?" he screamed frantically to the angel.

"That was the demo," she replied as she vanished. 
 

What if people bought cars like they buy computers?
 

HELPLINE: "General Motors Helpline, how can I help you?"
CUSTOMER: "I got in my car and closed the door, and nothing happened!"
HELPLINE: "Did you put the key in the ignition and turn it?"
CUSTOMER: "What's an ignition?"
HELPLINE: "It's a starter motor that draws current from your battery and turns over the engine."
CUSTOMER: "Ignition? Motor? Battery? Engine? How come I have to know all of these technical terms just to use my car?"

HELPLINE: "General Motors Helpline, how can I help you?"
CUSTOMER: "My car ran fine for a week, and now it won't go anywhere!"
HELPLINE: "Is the gas tank empty?"
CUSTOMER: "Huh? How do I know?"
HELPLINE: "There's a little gauge on the front panel, with a needle, and markings from 'E' to 'F'.  Where is the needle pointing?"
CUSTOMER: "I see an 'E' but no 'F'."
HELPLINE: "You see the 'E' and just to the right is the 'F'.
CUSTOMER: "No, just to the right of the first 'E' is a 'V'.
HELPLINE: "A 'V'?!?"
CUSTOMER: "Yeah, there's a 'C', an 'H', the first 'E', then a 'V', followed by 'R', 'O', 'L' ..."
HELPLINE: "No, no, no sir! That's the front of the car. When you sit behind the steering wheel, that's the panel I'm talking about."
CUSTOMER: "That steering wheel thing -- Is that the round thing that honks the horn?"
HELPLINE: "Yes, among other things."
CUSTOMER: "The needle's pointing to 'E'. What does that mean?"
HELPLINE: "It means that you have to visit a gasoline vendor and purchase some more gasoline.  You can install it yourself, or pay the vendor to install it for you."
CUSTOMER: "What? I paid $12,000 for this car! Now you tell me that I have to keep buying more components? I want a car that comes with everything built in!"

HELPLINE: "General Motors Helpline, how can I help you?"
CUSTOMER: "Your cars suck!"
HELPLINE: "What's wrong?"
CUSTOMER: "It crashed, that's what went wrong!"
HELPLINE: "What were you doing?"
CUSTOMER: "I wanted to go faster, so I pushed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. It worked for a while, and then it crashed -- and now it won't even start up!"
HELPLINE: "I'm sorry, sir, but it's your responsibility if you misuse the product."
CUSTOMER: "Misuse it? I was just following this damned manual of yours.  It said to make the car go to put the transmission in 'D' and press the accelerator pedal.  That's exactly what I did --now the damn thing's crashed."
HELPLINE: "Did you read the entire operator's manual before operating the car sir?"
CUSTOMER: "What? Of course I did! I told you I did EVERYTHING the manual said and it didn't work!"
HELPLINE: "Didn't you attempt to slow down so you wouldn't crash?"
CUSTOMER: "How do you do THAT?"
HELPLINE: "You said you read the entire manual, sir. It's on page 14.  The pedal next to the accelerator."
CUSTOMER: "Well, I don't have all day to sit around and read this manual you know."
HELPLINE: "Of course not. What do you expect us to do about it?"
CUSTOMER: "I want you to send me one of the latest versions that goes fast and won't crash anymore!"

HELPLINE: "General Motors Helpline, how can I help you?"
CUSTOMER: "Hi! I just bought my first car, and I chose your car because it has automatic transmission, cruise control, power steering, power brakes, and power door locks."
HELPLINE: "Thanks for buying our car. How can I help you?"
CUSTOMER: "How do I work it?"
HELPLINE: "Do you know how to drive?"
CUSTOMER: "Do I know how to what?"
HELPLINE: "Do you know how to DRIVE?"
CUSTOMER: "I'm not a technical person! I just want to go places in my car!" 

Letters from Summer Camp
 

Dear Mr. Dvorak:
Ann Landers wouldn't print this. I have nowhere else to turn. I have to get the word out. Warn other parents. I must be rambling on. Let me try and explain. It's about my son, Billy. He's always been a good, normal ten year old boy. Well, last spring we sat down after dinner to select a summer camp for Billy. We sorted through the camp brochures. There were the usual camps with swimming, canoeing, games, singing by the campfire
-- you know. There were sports camps and specialty camps for weight reduction, music, military camps and camps that specialized in Tibetan knot tying. I tried to talk him into Camp Winnepoopoo. It's where he went last year. (He made an adorable picture out of painted pinto beans and macaroni). Billy would have none of it. Billy pulled a brochure out of his pocket. It was for a COMPUTER CAMP! We should have put our foot down right there, if only we had known. He left three weeks ago. I don't know what's happened. He's changed. I can't explain it. See for yourself. These are some of my little Billy's letters.

Dear Mom,
The kids are dorky nerds. The food stinks. The computers are the only good part. We're learning how to program. Late at night is the best time to program, so they let us stay up.

Love, Billy.

Dear Mom,
Camp is O.K. Last night we had pizza in the middle of the night. We all get to choose what we want to drink. I drink Classic Coke. By the way, can you make Szechuan food? I'm getting used to it now. Gotta go, it's time for the flowchart class.

Love, Billy.

P.S. This is written on a wordprocessor. Pretty swell, huh? It's spellchecked too.

Dear Mom,
Don't worry. We do regular camp stuff. We told ghost stories by the glow of the green computer screens. It was real neat. I don't have much of a tan 'cause we don't go outside very often. You can't see the computer screen in the sunlight anyway. That wimp camp I went to last year fed us weird food too. Lay off, Mom. I'm okay, really.

Love, Billy.

Dear Mom,
I'm fine. I'm sleeping enough. I'm eating enough. This is the best camp ever. We scared the counselor with some phony worm code. It was real funny. He got mad and yelled. Frederick says it's okay. Can you send more money? I spent mine on a pocket protector and a box of blank diskettes. I've got to chip in on the phone bill. Did you know that you can talk to people on a computer? Give my regards to Dad.

Love, Billy.

Dear Mother,
Forget the money for the telephone. We've got a way to not pay. Sorry I haven't written. I've been learning a lot. I'm real good at getting onto any computer in the country. It's really easy! I got into the university's in less than fifteen minutes. Frederick did it in five, he's going to show me how. Frederick is my bunk partner. He's really smart. He says that I shouldn't call myself Billy anymore. So, I'm not.

Signed, William.

Dear Mother,
How nice of you to come up on Parents Day. Why'd you get so upset? I haven't gained that much weight. The glasses aren't real. Everybody wears them. I was trying to fit in. Believe me, the tape on them is cool. I thought that you'd be proud of my program. After all, I've made some money on it. A publisher is sending a check for $30,000. Anyway, I've paid for the next six weeks of camp. I won't be home until late August.

Regards, William.

Mother,
Stop treating me like a child. True -- physically I am only ten years old. It was silly of you to try to kidnap me. Do not try again. Remember, I can make your life miserable (i.e. - the bank, credit bureau, and government computers). I am not kidding. O.K.? I won't write again and this is your only warning. The emotions of this interpersonal communication drain me.

Sincerely, William.

See what I mean? It's been two weeks since I've heard from my little boy. What can I do, Mr.Dvorak? I know that it's probably too late to save my little Billy. But, if by printing these letters you can save JUST ONE CHILD from a life of programming, please, I beg of you to do so. Thank you very much.

Sally Gates, Concerned Parent

Mr. Dvorak inadequately replied: Come on, Sally, boys will be boys. 

DOS Airlines: Passengers are handed maps, compasses, rulers, pencils & an airplane manual (shrink wrapped) as they enter the plane...Have to figure out how to get the plane to wherever they want to go. Some succeed very well. Others crash, but they shouldn't have been messing around with airplanes anyway.

Macintosh Airlines: All the stewards, stewardesses, captains, baggage handlers & ticket agents look the same, act the same & talk the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are told you don't need to know, don't want to know & everything will be done for you without you having to know...so just shut up.

OS/2 Airlines: To board the plane, you have your ticket stamped 10 different times by standing in 10 different lines. Then you fill out a form showing where you want to sit & whether it should feel like an ocean liner, a passenger train or a bus. If you succeed in getting on board the plane and the plane succeeds in getting off the ground, you have a wonderful trip...except times when the rudder & flaps get frozen in position...in which case you have time to say your prayers & get yourself prepared for the crash.

Windows Airlines: The airport terminal is nice & colorful with friendly stewards & stewardesses, easy access to the plane and an uneventful takeoff...then the plane blows up without any warning whatsoever.

NT Airlines: (??? What's NT?) Everyone marches out on the runway, says the password in unision & forms the outline of a plane. Then they all sit down & make a whooshing sound like they're flying.

UNIX Airlines: Everyone brings one piece of the plane with them when they come to the airport. They all go out on the runway & put the plane together piece by piece, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they are building. 

Top 10 reasons computers must be male
 

10. Picky, picky, picky.
9. They hear what you say, but not what you mean.
8. Beauty is only shell deep.
7. When you ask what's wrong, they say 'nothing'.
6. Can produce incorrect results with alarming speed.
5. Always turning simple statements into big productions.
4. Small talk is important.
3. You do the same thing for years and suddenly it's wrong.
2. They make you take the garbage out.
1. One missed period and they go wild!

Telecommunications Dictionary.
 

    Token Ring         A virtual engagement gift.

    Ethernet            A device for catching the Ether Bunny.

    DataPac            A size 14 girl in a size 8 bikini.

    Asynch             A place to wash your hands.

    Bisynch            The place where Elton John washes his hands.

    BBS                Tall tales told by insects that produce honey.

    ASCII              Ancient god of Telecommunications.  Rumored to give vast amounts of data to believers. Hence, the phrase "ASCII and you shall receive."

    Block Parity     One heck of a good time.

    Carrier Detect Raison d'etre for premarital blood tests.
 
    File Transfer      Procedure followed by INFORMATION CENTER staff  who are tired of their present jobs.
 
    Hayes Compatible Prone to riding with a grizzled old cowhand who sings off-key. Gene Autry is the industry standard.

    Serial Interface A spoon.

    Terminal Emulation A function performed by a canary that lays on its back with its legs in the air.

    XMODEM A device on the losing end of a lightning encounter.

The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful Princess, I will stay with you for one week."
The boy took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket.
The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a Princess, I'll stay with you and do *Anything* you want."
Again the boy took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.

Finally the frog asked, "What is it? I've told you I'm a beautiful Princess, that I'll stay with you for a week and do *Anything* you want.
Why won't you kiss me?"

The boy said, "Look, I'm a computer programmer. I don't have time for girlfriends, but a talking frog is really cool." 

Here's the kernel source for Win95, leaked by a disgruntled employee . . .

/*W95Kern.cxx*/

#include <nonsense.h
#include <lies.h
#include <spyware.h /* Microsoft Network Connectivity library */ #include <process.h /* For the court of law */

#define say(x) lie(x)
#define computeruser ALL_WHO_WANT_TO_BUY_OUR_BUGWARE #define soon way_in_the_future
#define next_year soon
#define the_product_is_ready_to_ship another_beta_version

void main()
{
if (latest_window_version one_month_old) {
if (there_are_still_bugs)
market(bugfix);
if (sales_drop_below_certain_point) raise(RUMOURS_ABOUT_A_NEW_BUGLESS_VERSION); }
while(everyone_chats_about_new_version) {
make_false_promise(it_will_be_multitasking); /* Standard Call, in

lie.h */ if (rumours_grow_wilder)
make_false_promise(it_will_be_plug_n_play); if (rumours_grow_even_wilder)
{
      market_time=ripe;
      say("It will be ready in one month);
      order(programmers, stop_fixing_bugs_in_old_version);
      order(programmers, start_brainstorm_about_new_version);
      order(marketingstaff, permission_to_spread_nonsense);
      vapourware=TRUE;
      break;
     }
}
switch (nasty_questions_of_the_worldpress) {
     case WHEN_WILL_IT_BE_READY:
       say("It will be ready in", today+30_days," we're just testing");
       break;
    case WILL_THIS_PLUG_AND_PLAY_THING_WORK:
       say("Yes it will work");
       ask(programmers, why_does_it_not_work);
       pretend(there_is_no_problem);
       break;
     case WHAT_ARE_MINIMAL_HARDWARE_REQUIREMENTS:
       say("It will run on an 8086 with lightning speed due to the 32-bit
architecture");
       inform(INTEL, "Pentium sales will rise skyhigh");
       inform(SAMSUNG, "Start a new memorychip plant"
              "'cos all those customers will need at least 32 meg");
       inform(QUANTUM, "Thanks to our fatware your sales will triple");
       get_big_bonus(INTEL, SAMSUNG, QUANTUM);
       break;
     case DOES_MICROSOFT_GET_TOO_MUCH_INFLUENCE:
       say("Oh no, we are just here to make a better world for everyone");
       register(journalist, Big_Bill_Book);
       when(time_is_ripe)
       {
         arrest(journalist);
         brainwash(journalist);
         when(journalist_says_windows95_is_bugfree)
         {
           order(journalist, "write a nice objective article");
           release (journalist);
         }
       }
       break;
}
while (vapourware)
{
     introduction_date++; /* Delay */
     if (no_one_believes_anymore_there_will_be_a_release)
       break;
     say("It will be ready in",today+ONE_MONTH);
}
release(beta_version)
while (everyone_is_dumb_enough_to_buy_our_bugware) {
bills_bank_account += 150*megabucks; release(new_and_even_better_beta_version); introduce(more_memory_requirements); if (customers_report_installation_problems) {
      say("that is a hardware problem, not a software problem");
      if (smart_customer_says_but_you_promised_plug_and_play)
      {
        ignore(customer);
        order(microsoft_intelligence_agency, "Keep an eye on this b*stard");
      }
}
if ( bills_bank_account skyhigh && marriage two_years ) {
      divorce(woman_that_was_beautiful_when_I_married_her);
      wave(dollars, @lusty_chicks);
      marry(young_blonde_virgin_with_big_boobies);
      devirginize(young_blonde_virgin_with_big_boobies);
      if (boobies_start_to_hang)
        dump(young_blonde_virgin_with_big_boobies);
}

if (there_is_another_company)
{
      steal(their_ideas);
      accuse(company, stealing_our_ideas);
      hire(a_lot_of_lawyers); /* in process.h */
      wait(until_other_company_cannot_afford_another_lawsuit);
      buy_out(other_company);
}
}
/* Now everyone realizes that we sell bugware and they are angry at us*/ order(plastic_surgeon, make_bill_look_like_poor_bastard); buy(nice_little_island); hire(harem); laugh_at(everyone, for_having_the_patience_to_wait_year_after_year_ for_another_unfinished_version);
}

void bugfix(void)
{
charge (a_lot_of_money)
if (customer_says_he_does_not_want_to_pay_for_bugfix) say("It is not a bugfix but a new version"); if (still_complains)
{
ignore(customer);
register(customer, big_Bill_book);
/* We'll get him when everyone uses Billware */ }
}

--

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/M/S/O d- s+: a-- C++(++++)$ UBLAVS*+++++$ P---(--) L++++++$ E----(-) W+(++) N+ o--? K-? w+(---) O- M-- V-- PS PE Y? PGP- t+(+++) 5-- X+ R-(--) tv+ b(-) DI- D++ G+++++ e$+++ h-() r+++++ y? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ 

You Know You've Been Hacking Too Long When...

... You see the root beer at the grocery store as "Hi Res" instead of Hires.

... You feel the need to "download a pineapple/canadian bacon pizza".

... You think k.d.lang is a newsgroup

... You are watching a boring show on tv & wonder why the screen saver hadn't kicked in.

... You misspelled something with a pen and your first thought was to hit delete.

... You get in the elevator on your way home, pound on the button for your office floor, and wonder why the elevator won't toggle your location.

... Someone leaves a Post-It note on your screen, and after reading the note you click on the window beneath it to bring it to the foreground.

... You think "I wonder if my letter (snail mail) has reached its destination yet?" "Yes, it must have otherwise it would have bounced..."

...You comment your assembler code in C.

... You panic when someone says "The Sun's just gone down"

... You write down some code during an exam, stare at the page, and think "I wonder why the compiler's taking so long...".

... You sit down with friends at the cafeteria and say "re." (for IRC-literates only)

... You walk into a used bookstore, ask if they have any books about UNIX and wonder why they're giving you funny looks. 

BABY(1) USER COMMANDS BABY(1)

NAME

BABY - create new process from two parent processes

SYNOPSIS

BABY sex [ name ]

SYSTEM V SYNOPSIS

/usr/5bin/BABY [ -sex ] [ -name ]

AVAILABILITY
     The System V version of this command is available with the Sys-
     tem  V  software  installation  option.  Refer to Installing
     SunOS 4.1 for information on how to install and invoke BABY.
DESCRIPTION

BABY is initiated when one parent process polls another server process through a socket connection (BSD) or through pipes in the system V implementation. BABY runs at a low priority for approximately 40 weeks then terminates with heavy system load. Most systems require constant monitoring when BABY reaches it's final stages of execution.

Older implentations of BABY required that the initiating process not be present at the the initiating process is awakened and notified of the results upon
completion. Modern versions allow both parent processes to be active during the final stages of BABY.

example% BABY -sex m -name fred

OPTIONS
        -sex
          option indicating type of process created.

        -name
          process identification to be attaced to the new process.
RESULT
Successful execution of the BABY(1) results in new process
     being created and named. Parent processes then typically
     broadcast messages to all other processes informing them of their
     new status in the system.
BUGS
     The SLEEP command may not work on either parent processes for some
     time afterward, as new BABY processes constantly send interrupts
     which must be handled by one or more parent.

     BABY processes upon being created may frequently dump
     in /tmp requireing /tmp to be cleaned out frequently by one
     of the parent processes.

     The original AT&T version was provided without instuctions
     regarding the created process, this remains in current implementations.
SEE ALSO

cigars(6) dump(5) cry(3)

OTHER IMPLEMENTATIONS
        gnoops(1)
           FSF version of BABY where none of the authors will accept
           responsibility for anything.

Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.

COFFEE.EXE Missing - Insert Cup and Press Any Key

Buy a Pentium 586/90 so you can reboot faster.

2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.

Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.

Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.

My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.

C:\WINDOWS C:\WINDOWS\GO C:\PC\CRAWL

C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN RUN\DOS\RUN

<-------- The information went data way --------

Best file compression around: "DEL *.*" = 100% compression

The Definition of an Upgrade: Take old bugs out, put new ones in.

BREAKFAST.COM Halted...Cereal Port Not Responding

The name is Baud......, James Baud.

BUFFERS=20 FILES=15 2nd down, 4th quarter, 5 yards to go!

Access denied--nah nah na nah nah!

C:\ Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner.

Bad command. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaay..

Why doesn't DOS ever say "EXCELLENT command or filename!"

As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.

Southern DOS: Y'all reckon? (Yep/Nope)

Backups? We don' *NEED* no steenking backups.

E Pluribus Modem

... File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)

Ethernet (n): something used to catch the etherbunny

A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available.

An error? Impossible! My modem is error correcting.

CONGRESS.SYS Corrupted: Re-boot Washington D.C (Y/n)?

Does fuzzy logic tickle?

A computer's attention span is as long as it's power cord.

11th commandment - Covet not thy neighbor's Pentium.

24 hours in a day...24 beers in a case...coincidence?

Disinformation is not as good as datinformation.

Windows: Just another pane in the glass.

SENILE.COM found . . . Out Of Memory . . .

Who's General Failure & why's he reading my disk?

Ultimate office automation: networked coffee.

RAM disk is *not* an installation procedure.

Shell to DOS...Come in DOS, do you copy? Shell to DOS...

All computers wait at the same speed.

DEFINITION: Computer - A device designed to speed and automate errors.

Press <CTRL-<ALT-<DEL to continue ...

Smash forehead on keyboard to continue.....

Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...

ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI!

E-mail returned to sender -- insufficient voltage.

Help! I'm modeming... and I can't hang up!!!

All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?

Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

DOS Tip #17: Add DEVICE=FNGRCROS.SYS to CONFIG.SYS

Hidden DOS secret: add BUGS=OFF to your CONFIG.SYS

Press any key... no, no, no, NOT THAT ONE!

Press any key to continue or any other key to quit...

Excuse me for butting in, but I'm interrupt-driven.

REALITY.SYS corrupted: Reboot universe? (Y/N/Q)

Sped up my XT; ran it on 220v! Works greO?_~"

Error reading FAT record: Try the SKINNY one? (Y/N)

Read my chips: No new upgrades!

Hit any user to continue.

2400 Baud makes you want to get out and push!!

I hit the CTRL key but I'm still not in control!

Will the information superhighway have any rest stops?

Disk Full - Press F1 to belch.

Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (T)hrowup

Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic

(A)bort, (R)etry, (T)ake down entire network?

(A)bort, (R)etry, (G)et a beer?

If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.

Programmer - A red-eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with inanimate objects.

Real programmers don't document. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand." 

Q. What is the difference between a Mini Skirt, Micro Shirt and a Nano skirt?
It's all a matter of access time!

The following appeared in the Financial Times in England yesterday:

Q. How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a light bulb?
A. None. Bill Gates will redefine darkness as the industry standard.

God calls Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin to his office and says

So Boris Yeltsin goes to the Russian people and says
"I have bad news and I have worse news....the bad news is that we were wrong...there is a god.

The worse news is that world will end in 30 days."

Bill Clinton goes on TV and tells the American people "I have good news and I have bad news....
The good news is that the basic family values upon which we have based our lives are right,
there is a god....the bad news is that world will end in 30 days."

Bill Gates goes to his executive committee and says: "I have great news and I have fabulous news...
the great news is that God thinks I'm important. The fabulous news is that we don't have to ship Windows '95"

 

The ultimate FAQ for Microsoft (R) Windows, Version 4.2e

Here it is ! The REAL Windows FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) Version 4.2e ! The authors are still searching for more Windows/Microsoft/Bill Gates related experiences, short stories, origins and other jokes. Please send them to the support site mentioned at the end of this document.

1. Novice-Question : How do I recognize Windows ?

If your screen is invaded by countless silly little icons no one is able to understand, if your computers speed is reduced to almost zero, if your harddisk is full, if you can't start your normal programs anymore, then indeed you have made the fatal mistake of acquiring Microsoft Windows !

2. Virgin-Questions : What exactly is Windows ? Why do I need Windows ?

Windows is a form of modern warfare. It's yet another attempt of the electronics industry to rape and destroy the minds of its unsuspecting victims. And of course you don't need Windows. It needs you. Bill Gates needs you to buy it to get even more rich and hateful. Rumours that the Windows project was originally launched by psychiatrists to provide them with a constant source of new patients have not been confirmed yet.

3. McAfee-Question : Is Windows a virus ?

No, Windows is not a virus. Here's what viruses do:

• They replicate quickly - okay, Windows does that.
• Viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so - okay, Windows does that.
• Viruses will, from time to time, trash your hard disk - okay, Windows does that too.
• Viruses are usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems. Sigh... Windows does that, too.
• Viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow (see 2) and the user will buy new hardware. Yup, that's with Windows, too.

Viruses are well supported by their authors, are running on most systems, their program code is fast, compact and efficient and they tend to become more sophisticated as they mature. So Windows is not a virus. It's a bug.

4. Lamer-Question : Are there any cheats for Windows ?

Repeated pressing of ALT-F4 RETURN is said to enhance the quality of the working atmosphere. The same effect can be achieved by pressing the reset button of your computer.

5. Critics-Question : Why is Windows as bad as it is ?

If Windows were bug-free, fast, easy-to-use, compatible, openly structured, cheap and efficient, in other words if Windows were a good operating system, there would be no need for Microsofts daily updates (also called bug-changes) with which they trick the money out of their customers pockets into their own.
Also, such an operating system would not come from Microsoft, it would come from real programmers.

6. Nintendo-Mutant-Question : Is Windows a game ? Do I need a joystick ?

Yes, Windows is a game ! It has all the characteristics of a game : It has color graphics, sound, there is movement on the screen and the user has to press keys or use the mouse to play it. It's difficult to solve Windows or even Windows NT, but there are quick-guides or, for the inexperienced, complete step-by-step walk-throughs (see also Lamer-Question). There is no need for a joystick as Windows supports both keyboard, mouse and telepathy (think of a system crash and you get one).

7. Programmer-Question : Are there any standards for Windows programming ?

Of course there are. More than you can count. In fact, the wonderful thing about Windows programming specifications is that there are so many you can choose from and that they change from version to version. Not to forget the fact that no other program running under Windows makes use of them. All in all there's only one thing you need to know : Real Programmers don't use Windows.

8. Sceptics-Question : Is this text making any sense at all ?

As this text is about Windows, it cannot have any sense. It's a stupid text about a stupid would-be-program. It's kept close to the characteristics of its subject : It's funny, senseless, useless, and time and space consuming.

9. Version-Question : What's the newest version of Windows ?

"Kairo" and "Chicago" are out of date. After first test runs, Microsoft decided to rename their projects to the more appropiate titles "Titanic" and "Hindenburg". The alternative set of names "Atlantis" and "Tschernobyl" has been discarded. Rumours of other project names like "L.A.", "New York", "Irkutsk", "Chongqing", "Uppsala", "Claudia Schiffer", "Micky Maus", "Buy Me", "Schoppe" or "Extended Error 17" have been discarded.

10. Utility-Question : Is there a tool that takes care of Windows ?

Yes ! Look out for the new V4.2 release of KillWin, available at all well stocked computer stores and mailboxes. KillWin V4.2 features auto-detection of Windows on all drives and four modes of operation combined with optional full purging and packing. Average savings of hard disk space exceed more than 20 MByte, average working speed is increased dramatically and user happiness is made possible.

11. Defender-Question : How can I protect my system against Windows ?

The easiest way is to make McAfee's Scan recognize it. To do this, create a file (e.g. "winvirus.txt") with the following content :

#The two-faced sinister Windows Virus
"e87928bbf6048be3", Microsoft (R) Windows

(Don't forget the return at the end of the last line !)

To check your programs for viruses, start Scan like this :

SCAN /EXT WINVIRUS.TXT

Note that if the file is not in the current directory, the full path name must be specified, e.g. scan /ext j:\dos\tools\virus\scan\ext\winvirus.txt

99. Bill Gates-Question : Are you nuts ?

Yes of course, Windows made us so.

Pentium Humor
 

'Twas the night before Christmas,
And all over the 'Net,
All the posts about Intel,
Made everyone fret,

The whiners were vocal,
They wouldn't shut up,
Complaining about Intel's,
FDIV cover up,

The engineers were nestled,
All snug in their labs,
Worrying about Intel's,
Mistake in the fabs,

They made up excuses,
On how they're affected,
They called up Intel,
And were promptly rejected,

And soon IBM jumped,
Right into the fray,
"We'll stop shipping Pentiums,
As of later today."

But their statement was just
More political lies,
Because they said the next day,
"We're still shipping those dies!"

But from where came this noise,
And vindictive clatter,
About a minor flaw,
That should not have mattered,

Well there was a math prof,
Doing work in V A,
He came to realize that,
Divs shouldn't happen this way,

So Prof. Nicely described,
The bug that he found,
It wasn't too long later,
That news got around,

Lots of people complained,
Without reason or rhyme,
Just because number five,
Equalled four point nine nine,

The media latched on,
And rumors were spread,
It took no time to proclaim,
That Intel was dead,

As I was reading more news,
A thought came to me,
Intel can't possibly die,
They have a monopoly,

So on Andy, on Craig,
On Gordon and Vin,
Make sure with P6,
This doesn't happen again,

As I logged off, I thought:
"This debate is absurd."
So I soon logged back in,
And uttered these words,

"There are too many issues,
I refuse to take sides.
Merry Christmas to all,
And watch your divides." 

THE ABC'S OF UNIX
 

C is for CC, as hackers recall, while D is for DD, the command that does all.

E is for Emacs, which rebinds your keys, and F is for Fsck, which rebuilds your trees.

G is for Grep, a clever detective, while H is for Halt, which may seem defective.

I is for Indent, which rarely amuses, and J is for Join, which nobody uses.

K is for Kill, which makes you the boss, while L is for Lex, which is missing from DOS.

M is for More, from which Less was begot, and N is for Nice, which it really is not.

O is for Od, which prints out things nice, while P is for Passwd, which reads in strings twice.

Q is for Quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and R is for Ranlib, for sorting ar [sic] table.

S is for Spell, which attempts to belittle, while T is for True, which does very little.

U is for Uniq, which is used after Sort, and V is for Vi, which is hard to abort.

W is for Whoami, which tells you your name, while X is, well, X, of dubious fame.

Y is for Yes, which makes an impression, and Z is for Zcat, which handles compression.

Sys Abmin Blues
 

Well, I hope I'm on the road to recovery. The first step is admitting: 'I am a recovering sysadmin.'

Is this what the group is for? If not, sorry, and I do have a question about recovering data... Is there a way to restore a / drive while booting from that same drive?

BACK TO THE FUTURE
 

is expected to triple in size, from $1.7 billion this year to more than $5.1 billion by the year 2000.

Here is the diary of a future homeowner! 

November 28, 1995: Moved in atlast. Finally, we live in the smartest house in the neighborhood. Everything's networked. The cable TV is connected to our phone, which is connected to my PC, which is connected to the power lines,
all the appliances and the security system. Everything runs off a universal remote with the friendliest interface I've ever used. Programming is a snap.

I'm, like, totally wired.

November 30: Hot stuff! Programmed my VCR from the office, turned up the thermostat and switched on the lights with the car phone, remotely tweaked the owen a few degrees for my pizza. Everything nice and cozy when I arrived.
May be I should get the universal remote surgically attached.

December 3: Yesterday, the kitchen crashed. Freak event. As I opened the refrigerator door, the light bulb blew. Immediately everything else electrical shut down -- lights, microwave, cofee maker -- everything! Carefully, I unplugged and replugged all the appliances. Nothing. Called the cable company (but not from the kitchen phone). They refer me to the Utility Company. The utility insists the problem was in the software. So the software company runs some remote telediagnostics via my house processor.

Their expert system calims it has to be the utility's fault. I don't care, I just want my kitchen back. More phone calls. More remote diagnostics.

Turns out the problem was "unanticipated failure mode" -- the network had never seen a refrigerator bulb failure while the door was open. So the fuzzy logic interpreted the burnout as a power surge and shut down the entire kitchen. But beacuse sensor memory confirmed that there had'nt actually been a power surge, the kitchen's logic sequence was confused so it could not do a standard restart.

The utility guy swears this was the first time this has ever happened. Rebooting the kitchen took over an hour.

December 7: The police are not happy. Our house keeps calling them for help. We discover that whenever we play the TV or stereo above 25 decibels, it creates patterns of micro-vibrations that get amplified when they actually hit the windows. When these vibrations mix with the gust of wind, the security sensors are actuated and the police computer concludes that someone is trying to break in. Go figure ...

Another glitch: whenever the basement is in self-diagnostic mode, the universal remote won't let me change the channels on my TV. That means I actually have to get up off the couch and change the channels by hand. The software and utility people say this flaw will be fixed in the next upgrade SmartHouse 2.1, but it's not ready yet.

December 12: This is a nightmare. There's a virus in the house. My personal computer caught it while browsing on the public access network. I come home and the living room is a sauna, the bedroom windows are covered with ice, the refrigerator has defrosted, tha washing machine has flooded the basement, the garage door is cycling up and down and the TV is stuck on the Home Shopping channel. Throughout the house lights flicker like stroboscopes until they explode from the strain. Broken galss is everywhere. Of course, the security sensors detect nothing.

I look at a message slowly throbbing on my PC screen: "Welcome to HomeWreker !!! Now the FUN begins ... (be it ever so humble, there is no virus like HomeWreker ...)". I get out of the house fast.

December 18: I think they have digitally disinfected the house but the place is a shambles. Pipes have burst and we're not completely sure we've got the part of the virus that attacks the toilets. Nevertheless, The Exorcists (as the anti-virus SWAT members like to call themselves) are confident the worst is over. "HomeWreker is pretty bad," one tells me, "but consider yourself lucky you did'nt get Poltergeist. That one is really evil".

December 19: Apparently, our house isn't insured for viruses. "Fires and mudslides yes," says the claims adjuster, "viruses, no". My agreement with SmartHouse people explicitly states that all calims and warranties are null and void if any appliance or computer in my house networks in any way, shape or form with a noncertified on-line service. Everybody's very, very sorry but they can't be expected to anticipate every virus that may be created.

We call our lawyer. He laughs. He's excited.

December 21: I get a call from a SmartHouse sales rep. As a special holiday offer, we get the free opportunity to become a beta site for the company's new SmartHouse 2.1 upgrade. He says I'll be able to meet the programmers personally. "Sure," I tell him ... 

How Computer Companies Die

     The environment that nurtures creative programmers kills management
     and marketing types - and vice versa.  Programming is the Great Game.
     It consumes you, body and soul.  When you're caught up in it, nothing
     else matters.  When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover
     that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than
     the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes
     lying around, it must be spring already.  But you don't care, because
     your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight.  You
     won.  They've never jousted with Windows or gone hand to hand with
     DOS.  To them, C++ is a decent grade, almost a B - not a language.
     They barely exist.  Like soldiers or artists, you don't care about the
     opinions of civilians.  You're building something intricate and fine.
     They'll never understand it.

     BEEKEEPING

     Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on:
     You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees.  You
     can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in
     one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.
     You keep these bees from stinging by paying them money.  More money
     than they know what to do with.  But that's less than you might think.
     You see, all these programmers keep hearing their parents' voices in
     their heads saying "When are you going to join the real world?"  All
     you have to pay them is enough money that they can answer (also in
     their heads) "Geez, Dad, I'm making more than you."  On average, this
     is cheap.  And you get them to stay in the hive by giving them other
     coders to swarm with.  The only person whose praise matters is another
     programmer.  Less-talented programmers will idolize them; evenly
     matched ones will challenge and goad one another; and if you want to
     get a good swarm, you make sure that you have at least one certified
     genius coder that they can all look up to, even if he glances at other
     people's code only long enough to sneer at it.  He's a Player, thinks
     the junior programmer.  He looked at my code.  That is enough.  If a
     software company provides such a hive, the coders will give up sleep,
     love, health, and clean laundry, while the company keeps the bulk of
     the money.

     OUT OF CONTROL

     Here's the problem that ends up killing company after company.  All
     successful companies had, as their dominant personality, a leader who
     nurtured programmers.  But no company can keep such a leader forever.
     Either he cashes out, or he brings in management types who end up
     driving him out, or he changes and becomes a management type himself.
     One way or another, marketers get control.  But...control of what?
     Instead of finding assembly lines of productive workers, they quickly
     discover that their product is produced by utterly unpredictable,
     uncooperative, disobedient, and worst of all, unattractive people who
     resist all attempts at management.  Put them on a time clock, dress
     them in suits, and they become sullen and start sabotaging the
     product.  Worst of all, you can sense that they are making fun of you
     with every word they say.

     The shock is greater for the coder, though.  He suddenly finds that
     alien creatures control his life.  Meetings, Schedules, Reports.  And
     now someone demands that he PLAN all his programming and then stick to
     the plan, never improving, never tweaking, and never, never touching
     some other team's code.  The lousy young programmer who once worshiped
     him is now his tyrannical boss, a position he got because he played
     golf with some sphincter in a suit.  The hive has been ruined.  The
     best coders leave.  And the marketers, comfortable now because they're
     surrounded by power neckties and they have things under control, are
     baffled that each new iteration of their software loses market share
     as the code bloats and the bugs proliferate.  Got to get some better
     packaging.  Yeah, that's it.
 

And now, time for another session of ...ASK DR. INTERNET...
 

The Internet is actually much smaller than most people think. It is primarily composed of fiber optic cables no thicker than a human hair, which can be conveniently rolled up and stored in a foot locker. Janitors at the National Science Foundation do this on the third Tuesday of every month when they wax the floors.

Since fiber optics are the size of human hairs, they also make attractive wigs. The next time you watch a Sprint commercial, you'll see that Candice Bergen's alleged hair is really the T4 backbone.

The earliest origins of the Internet can be traced to Ancient Greece, where a loosely connected set of networks was used to discuss exploration in the Black Sea. The Argonets, as they were then called, were entirely subsidized by the government, and won one of William Proxmire's first Golden Fleece awards.

The Internet grows hyperbolically, but is usually described elliptically.

2. Who owns the Internet?

There is no one person or agency that owns the Internet. Instead, parts of it are owned by the Illuminati and parts are owned by Free Masons.

3. What do the Internet addresses mean?

Precise meanings are often hard to determine. The address baker.lib.washington.edu--which is sometimes written baker@lib.washington.edu--seems to refer to a computer either owned by a baker or by someone named Baker. This can be deceiving however; names like this actually refer to where a computer is located. This one is on top of Mt. Baker.

In addition to names, computers on the Internet also have numbers. This is part of the whole right brain/left brain thing.

4. Tell me how to get on and off various lists and discussion groups.

Getting off on various lists is currently the subject of pending legislation.

5. What is "Netiquette?"

"Netiquette" is one of many cutesy neologisms created by combining two other words. In this case, "network" and "tourniquette" combine to describe a program that shuts down a computer if it starts transmitting information too fast.

6. What is "Flaming?"

Along with an improvisational approach to floating point arithmetic, early Pentium chips were noted for generating heat. While some hackers speak fondly of roasting marshmallows over their first P60s, others found themselves badly singed as the chips caught fire. This "flaming" sometimes occurred while the user was composing e-mail, resulting in poorly chosen or excessively vitriolic verbiage.

7. What is "Bandwidth?"

As capacity on the Internet has increased, people have begun to transmit material other than simple text. One notable example is audio recordings of rock concerts. These audio files are much larger than even very long books, so they have become a standard unit of network usage. One Rolling Stone song equals one "band" width, and so on.

8. Why can't I FTP to some places?

There are two main reasons for this. The first is that the site you want to ftp files from is exercising a certain degree of control over its network resources; in network parlance, this is called "fascism."

The second reason is that the remote site may be dabbling with such network fads as gopher or the World Wide Web. This is called "keeping up with the times."

9. What is the World Wide Web, Gopherspace, etc?

The World Wide Web, or WWW, is an experiment in generating acronyms that are much more difficult to pronounce than the words they replace.

Gopherspace is an older network term. In response to the Soviet space program's early use of dogs in space, NASA mounted a program to orbit a number of different rodents. The programmers involved in this project adopted the motto "Gophers in space!" which has since been shortened. The only actual gopher to go into orbit had been digging up the carrots in Werner Von Braun's garden, and was named Veronica after his daughter.

10. Why can't I get some WWW stuff via FTP?

It can be hard to say this, but some users of the Internet are unable to do things because they are stupid. The comparatively trivial task of getting an ftp client to do every single thing a WWW browser can do is beneath this column's attention.

Tune in next time for Ask Dr. Internet--

"I have a master's degree....in Internet!" 

If you have half a brain, you can't help but notice the throng of
publications, analists and net users declaring Windows 95 the
Saviour of the Computer Industry. If you have less than half a
brain, you probably believe it. Could it be?

Let's compare Windows 95 against a widely-accepted Saviour, Jesus of Nazareth:
 
 
 

You know you've been on the 'net too long, when:
 
• Your System Administrator complains that your kill file(s) has maxed out the file system, and is there any way to archive it?
• You still haven't changed all those .arpa addresses in your address book of old friends.
• Your news feed is from Australia because they are the only ones who still provide net-news via dial-up uucp.
• You are still planning a transition to NCP on 64K leased-line because you're not sure this TCP thing will last.
• You spend 100 hours porting NNTP to your Sun 100U. Who's bright idea was it to change the function definition syntax in C, anyway?
• Your old e-mail buddys' children send you more e-mail then your old e-mail buddys.
• You finally switch to pine, but it invokes ed, not pico.
• Your postings consist entirely of abbreviations.
• You've mastered every form of Internet Rhetoric
• You disagree with me and you said so, so you're trying to censor me, therefore you are a Nazi.
• I am standing up for a right and you disagree with me, so you are anti-rights, and therefore a Nazi.
• I am an agreeable person and you are disagreeing with me, so you are a disagreeable person with the personality of Hitler and therefore a Nazi.
• You feel that the Golden age of the net ended with one of:
• Introduction of the .com domain or CIX
• Introduction of CsNet
• Dismantlement of CsNet
• Windows-based news readers & SMTP
• moscvax

If Dr. Seuss Were a Technical Writer.....
 

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, T
hen the socket packet pocket has an error to report!

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash!

You can't say this?
What a shame sir!
We'll find you
Another game sir.

If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc,
Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to ram your rom.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!

KNOW YOUR UNIX SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR - A FIELD GUIDE

There are four major species of Unix sysad:

• The TECHNICAL THUG. Usually a systems programmer who has been forced into system administration; writes scripts in a polyglot of the Bourne shell, sed, C, awk, perl, and APL.
• The ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST. Usually a retentive drone (or rarely, a harridan ex-secretary) who has been forced into system administration.
• The MANIAC. Usually an aging cracker who discovered that neither the Mossad nor Cuba are willing to pay a living wage for computer espionage. Fell into system administration; occasionally approaches major competitors with indesp schemes.
• The IDIOT. Usually a cretin, morpohodite, or old COBOL programmer selected to be the system administrator by a committee of cretins, morphodites, and old COBOL programmers.

SITUATION: Low disk space.
TECHNICAL THUG: Writes a suite of scripts to monitor disk usage, maintain a database of historic disk usage, predict future disk usage via least squares regression analysis, identify users who are more than a standard deviation over the mean, and send mail to the offending parties. Places script in cron. Disk usage does not change, since disk-hogs, by nature, either ignore script-generated mail, or file it away in triplicate.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Puts disk usage policy in motd. Uses disk quotas. Allows no exceptions, thus crippling development work. Locks accounts that go over quota.

MANIAC:
# cd /home
# rm -rf `du -s * | sort -rn | head -1 | awk '{print $2}'`;

IDIOT:
# cd /home
# cat `du -s * | sort -rn | head -1 | awk '{ printf "%s/*\n", $2}'` | compress

SITUATION: Excessive CPU usage.
TECHNICAL THUG: Writes a suite of scripts to monitor processes, maintain a database of CPU usage, identify processes more than a standard deviation over the norm, and renice offending processes. Places script in cron. Ends up renicing the production database into oblivion, bringing operations to a grinding halt, much to the delight of the xtrek freaks.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Puts CPU usage policy in motd. Uses CPU quotas. Locks accounts that go over quota. Allows no exceptions, thus crippling development work, much to the delight of the xtrek freaks.

MANIAC:
# kill -9 `ps -augxww | sort -rn +8 -9 | head -1 | awk '{print $2}'`

IDIOT:
# compress -f `ps -augxww | sort -rn +8 -9 | head -1 | awk '{print $2}'`

SITUATION: New account creation.
TECHNICAL THUG: Writes perl script that creates home directory, copies in incomprehensible default environment, and places entries in /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, and /etc/group. (By hand, NOT with passmgmt.) Slaps on setuid bit; tells a nearby secretary to handle new accounts. Usually, said secretary is still dithering over the difference between 'enter' and 'return'; and so, no new accounts are ever created.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Puts new account policy in motd. Since people without accounts cannot read the motd, nobody ever fulfills the bureaucratic requirements; and so, no new accounts are ever created.

MANIAC: "If you're too stupid to break in and create your own account, I don't want you on the system. We've got too many goddamn sh*t-for-brains a**holes on this box anyway."

IDIOT:
# cd /home; mkdir "Bob's home directory" # echo "Bob Simon:gandalf:0:0::/dev/tty:compress -f" /etc/passwd

SITUATION: Root disk fails.
TECHNICAL THUG: Repairs drive. Usually is able to repair filesystem from boot monitor. Failing that, front-panel toggles microkernel in and starts script on neighboring machine to load binary boot code into broken machine, reformat and reinstall OS. Lets it run over the weekend while he goes mountain climbing.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Begins investigation to determine who broke the drive. Refuses to fix system until culprit is identified and charged for the equipment.

MANIAC, LARGE SYSTEM: Rips drive from system, uses sledgehammer to smash same to flinders. Calls manufacturer, threatens pets. Abuses field engineer while they put in a new drive and reinstall the OS.

MANIAC, SMALL SYSTEM: Rips drive from system, uses ball-peen hammer to smash same to flinders. Calls Requisitions, threatens pets. Abuses bystanders while putting in new drive and reinstalling OS.

IDIOT: Doesn't notice anything wrong.

SITUATION: Poor network response.
TECHNICAL THUG: Writes scripts to monitor network, then rewires entire machine room, improving response time by 2%. Shrugs shoulders, says, "I've done all I can do," and goes mountain climbing.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Puts network usage policy in motd. Calls up Berkeley and AT&T, badgers whoever answers for network quotas. Tries to get xtrek freaks fired.

MANIAC: Every two hours, pulls ethernet cable from wall and waits for connections to time out.

IDIOT:
# compress -f /dev/en0

SITUATION: User questions.
TECHNICAL THUG: Hacks the code of emacs' doctor-mode to answer new users questions. Doesn't bother to tell people how to start the new "guru-mode", or for that matter, emacs.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Puts user support policy in motd. Maintains queue of questions. Answers them when he gets a chance, often within two weeks of receipt of the proper form.

MANIAC: Screams at users until they go away. Sometimes barters knowledge for powerful drink and/or sycophantic adulation.

IDIOT: Answers all questions to best of his knowledge until the user realizes few UNIX systems support punched cards or JCL.

SITUATION: *Stupid* user questions.
TECHNICAL THUG: Answers question in hex, binary, postfix, and/or French until user gives up and goes away.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Locks user's account until user can present documentation demonstrating their qualification to use the machine.

MANIAC:
# cat ~luser/.cshrc
alias vi 'rm \!*;unalias vi;grep -v BoZo ~/.cshrc ~/.z; mv -f ~/.z ~/.cshrc' ^D

IDIOT: Answers all questions to best of his knowledge. Recruits user to system administration team.

SITUATION: Process accounting management.
TECHNICAL THUG: Ignores packaged accounting software; trusts scripts to sniff out any problems & compute charges.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Devotes 75% of disk space to accounting records owned by root and chmod'ed 000.

MANIAC: Laughs fool head off at very mention of accounting.

IDIOT:
# lpr /etc/wtmp /usr/adm/paact

SITUATION: Religious war, BSD vs. System V.
TECHNICAL THUG: BSD. Crippled on System V boxes.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: System V. Horrified by the people who use BSD. Places frequent calls to DEA.

MANIAC: Prefers BSD, but doesn't care as long as HIS processes run quickly.

IDIOT:
# cd c:

SITUATION: Religious war, System V vs. AIX
TECHNICAL THUG: Weeps.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: AIX-- doesn't much care for the OS, but loves the jackboots.

MANIAC: System V, but keeps AIX skills up, knowing full well how much Big Financial Institutions love IBM...

IDIOT: AIX.

SITUATION: Balky printer daemons.
TECHNICAL THUG: Rewrites lpd in FORTH.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Puts printer use policy in motd. Calls customer support every time the printer freezes. Tries to get user who submitted the most recent job fired.

MANIAC: Writes script that kills all the daemons, clears all the print queues, and maybe restarts the daemons. Runs it once a hour from cron.

IDIOT:
# kill -9 /dev/lp ; /dev/lp &

SITUATION: OS upgrade.
TECHNICAL THUG: Reads source code of new release, takes only what he likes.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Instigates lawsuit against the vendor for having shipped a product with bugs in it in the first place.

MANIAC:
# uptime
1:33pm up 19 days, 22:49, 167 users, load average: 6.49, 6.45, 6.31 # wall
Well, it's upgrade time. Should take a few hours. And good luck on that 5:00 deadline, guys! We're all pulling for you! ^D

IDIOT:
# dd if=/dev/rmt8 of=/vmunix

SITUATION: Balky mail.
TECHNICAL THUG: Rewrites sendmail.cf from scratch. Rewrites sendmail in SNOBOL. Hacks kernel to implement file locking. Hacks kernel to implement "better" semaphores. Rewrites sendmail in assembly. Hacks kernel to . . .

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Puts mail use policy in motd. Locks accounts that go over mail use quota. Keeps quota low enough that people go back to interoffice mail, thus solving problem.

MANIAC:
# kill -9 `ps -augxww | grep sendmail | awk '{print $2}'` # rm -f /usr/spool/mail/*
# wall
Mail is down. Please use interoffice mail until we have it back up. ^D
# write max
I've got my boots and backpack. Ready to leave for Mount Tam? ^D

IDIOT:
# echo "HELP!" | mail tech_support.AT.vendor.com%kremvax%bitnet!BIFF!!!

SITUATION: Users want phone list application.
TECHNICAL THUG: Writes RDBMS in perl and Smalltalk. Users give up and go back to post-it notes.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Oracle. Users give up and go back to post-it notes.

MANIAC: Tells the users to use flat files and grep, the way God meant man to keep track of phone numbers. Users give up and go back to post-it notes.

IDIOT:
% dd ibs=80 if=/dev/rdisk001s7 | grep "Fred"

OTHER GUIDELINES:

TYPICAL ROOT .cshrc FILE:
TECHNICAL THUG: Longer than eight kilobytes. Sources the output of a perl script, rewrites itself.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Typical lines include: umask 777
alias cd 'cd \!*; rm -rf ching *hack mille omega rogue xtrek & /dev/null &'

MANIAC: Typical lines include: alias rm 'rm -rf \!*'
alias hose kill -9 '`ps -augxww | grep \!* | awk \'{print $2}\'`' alias kill 'kill -9 \!* ; kill -9 \!* ; kill -9 \!*' alias renice 'echo Renice\? You must mean kill -9.; kill -9 \!*'

IDIOT: Typical lines include:
alias dir ls
alias era rm
alias kitty cat
alias process_table ps
setenv DISPLAY vt100

HOBBIES, TECHNICAL:
TECHNICAL THUG: Writes entries for Obsfuscated C contest. Optimizes INTERCAL scripts. Maintains ENIAC emulator. Virtual reality .

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Bugs office. Audits card-key logs. Modifies old TVs to listen in on cellular phone conversations. Listens to police band.

MANIAC: Volunteers at Survival Research Labs. Bugs office. Edits card-key logs. Modifies old TVs to listen in on cellular phone conversations. Jams police band.

IDIOT: Ties shoes. Maintains COBOL decimal to roman numeral converter. Rereads flowcharts from his salad days at Rand.

HOBBIES, NONTECHNICAL:
TECHNICAL THUG: Drinks "Smart Drinks." Attends raves. Hangs out at poetry readings and Whole Earth Review events and tries to pick up Birkenstock MOTAS.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Reads _Readers Digest_ and _Mein Kampf_. Sometimes turns up car radio and sings along to John Denver. Golfs. Drinks gin martinis. Hangs out in yuppie bars and tries to pick up dominatrixes.

MANIAC: Reads _Utne Reader_ and _Mein Kampf_. Faithfully attends Dickies and Ramones concerts. Punches out people who say "virtual reality." Drinks damn near anything, but favors Wild Turkey, Black Bush, and grain alcohol. Hangs out in neighborhood bars and tries to pick up MOTAS by drinking longshoremen under the table .

IDIOT: Reads _Time_ and _Newsweek_-- and *believes* them. Drinks Jagermeister. Tries to pick up close blood relations-- often succeeds, producting next generation of idiots.

1992 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION:
TECHNICAL THUG: Clinton, but only because he liked Gore's book.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Bush. Possibly Clinton, but only because he liked Tipper.

MANIAC: Frank Zappa.

IDIOT: Perot.

1996 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION:
TECHNICAL THUG: Richard Stallman - Larry Wall.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Nixon - Buchanan.

MANIAC: Frank Zappa.

IDIOT: Quayle.

COMPOUND SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORS:

TECHNICAL FASCIST: Hacks kernel & writes a horde of scripts to prevent folk from ever using more than their fair share of system resources. Resulting overhead and load brings system to its knees.

TECHNICAL MANIAC: Writes scripts that SEEM to be monitoring the system, but are actually encrypting large lists of passwords. Uses nearby nodes as beta test sites for worms.

TECHNICAL IDIOT: Writes superuser-run scripts that sooner or later do an "rm -rf /".

FASCISTIC MANIAC: At first hint of cracker incursions, whether real or imagined, shuts down system by triggering water-on-the-brain detectors and Halon system.

FASCISTIC IDIOT:
# cp /dev/null /etc/passwd

MANIACAL IDIOT:  Napalms the CPU.

Real Programmers Don't Write Specs
 

• Real Programmers don't write specs -- users should consider themselves lucky to get any programs at all and take what they get.
• Real Programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand and even harder to modify.
• Real Programmers don't write application programs; they program right down on the bare metal. Application programming is for feebs who can't do systems programming.
• Real Programmers don't eat quiche. In fact, real programmers don't know how to SPELL quiche. They eat Twinkies, and Szechwan food.
• Real Programmers don't write in COBOL. COBOL is for wimpy applications programmers.
• Real Programmers' programs never work right the first time. But if you throw them on the machine they can be patched into working in "only a few" 30-hour debugging sessions.
• Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies.
• Real Programmers never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9 AM, it's because they were up all night.
• Real Programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in BASIC, after the age of 12.
• Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
• Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle of the machine room.
• Real Programmers don't document. Documentation is for simps who can't read the listings or the object deck.
• Real Programmers don't write in BLISS, or ADA, or any of those pinko computer science languages. Strong typing is for people with weak memories.
• Real Programmers only write specs for languages that might run on future hardware. Noboby trusts them to write specs for anything homo sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet.
• Real Programmers spend 70% of their work day fiddling around and then get more done in the other 30% than a user could get done in a week.
• Real Programmers are surprised when the odometers in their cars don't turn from 99999 to 9999A.
• Real Programmers are concerned with the aesthetics of their craft; they will writhe in pain at shabby workmanship in a piece of code.
• Real Programmers will defend to the death the virtues of a certain piece of peripheral equipment, especially their lifeline, the terminal.
• Real Programmers never use hard copy terminals, they never use terminals that run at less than 9600 baud, they never use a terminal at less than its maximum practical speed.
• Real Programmers think they know the answers to your problems, and will happily tell them to you rather than answer your questions.
• Real Programmers never program in COBOL, money is no object.
• Real Programmers never right justify text that will be read on a fixed-character-width medium.
• Real Programmers wear hiking boots only when it's much too cold to wear sandals. When it's only too cold, they wear socks with their sandals.
• Real Programmers don't think that they should get paid at all for their work, but they know that they're worth every penny that they do make.
• Real Programmers log in first thing in the morning, last thing before they go to sleep, and stay logged in for lots of time in between.
• Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are after all, the illerate's form of documentation.
• Real Programmers don't use Macs. Computers which draw cute little pictures are for wimps.
• Real Programmers don't read manuals. Reliance on a reference is the hallmark of a novice and a coward.
• Real Programmers don't write in COBOL. COBOL is for gum chewing twits who maintain ancient payroll programs.
• Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for wimpy engineers who wear white socks. They get excited over finite state analysis and nuclear reactor simulations.
• Real Programmers don't write in Modula-2. Modula-2 is for insecure analretentives who can't choose between Pascal and COBOL.
• Real Programmers don't write in APL, unless the whole program can be written on one line.
• Real Programmers don't write in Lisp. Only effeminate programmers use more parentheses than actual code.
• Real Programmers distain structured programming. Structured programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up sharp pencils on an otherwise clear desk.
• Real Programmers scorn floating point arithmetic. The decimal point was invented for pansy bedwetters who are unable to think big.
• Real Programmers know every nuance of every instruction and use them all in every Real Program. Some candyass architectures won't allow EXECUTE instructions to address another EXECUTE instruction as the target instruction. Real Programmers despise petty restrictions.
• Real Programmers Don't use PL/I. PL/I is for insecure momma's boys who can't choose between Cobol and Fortran.
• Real Programmers don't like the team programming concept. Unless, of course, they are the Chief Programmer.
• Real Programmers have no use for managers. Managers are sometimes a necessary evil. Managers are good for dealing with personnel bozos, bean counters, senior planners and other mental defectives.
• Real programmers ignore schedules.
• Real Programmers don't bring brown bag lunches to work. If the vending machine sells it, they eat it. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't eat it.
• Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
• Real Programmers use C since it's the easiest language to spell.
• Real Programmers don't use symbolic debuggers, who needs symbols.
• Real Programmers only curse at inanimate objects.