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Useful Acronyms

PCMCIA People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
ISDN It Still Does Nothing
APPLE Arrogance Produces Profit-Losing Entity
SCSI System Can't See It
DOS Defunct Operating System
BASIC Bill's Attempt to Seize Industry Control
IBM I Blame Microsoft
DEC Do Expect Cuts
CD-ROM Consumer Device, Rendered Obsolete in Months
OS/2 Obsolete Soon, Too.
WWW World Wide Wait
MACINTOSH Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating System Hangs
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Important Theological Questions that are Answered If we Think of God as a Computer Programmer. ==========================================================
Q: Does God control everything that happens in my life?
A: He could if he used the debugger, but it's tedious to step through all those variables.

Q: Why does God allow evil to happen?
A: God thought He eliminated evil in one of the earlier versions.

Q: Does God know everything?
A: He likes to think so, but He is often amazed to find out what goes on in the daemon scripts.

Q: What causes God to intervene in earthly affairs?
A: If a critical error occurs, the system pages Him automatically and He logs on from home to try to bring it up. Otherwise things can wait until tomorrow.

Q: Did God really create the world in seven days?
A: He did it in six days and nights while living on Jolt and candy bars. On the seventh day He went home and found out His girlfriend had left Him.

Q: How come the Age of Miracles Ended?
A: That was the development phase of the project; now we are in the maintenance phase.

Q: Will there be another Universe after the Big Bang?
A: A lot of people are drawing things on the white board, but personally, God doubts that it will ever be implemented.

Q: Who is Satan?
A: Satan is an MIS director who takes credit for more powers than he actually possesses, so nontechnical people are scared of him. God thinks of him as irritating but irrelevant.

Q: What is the role of sinners?
A: Sinners are the people who find new and imaginative ways to mess up the system when God has made it idiot-proof.

Q: Where will I go after I die?
A: Onto a DAT tape.

Q: Will I be reincarnated?
A: Not unless there is a special need to recreate you. And searching those .tar files is a major hassle, so if there is a request for you, God will just say that the tape has been lost.

Q: Am I unique and special in the universe?
A: There are over 10,000 major university and corporate sites running exact duplicates of you in the present release version.

Q: What is the purpose of the universe?
A: God created it because He values elegance and simplicity, but then the users and managers demanded He tack all this senseless stuff onto it, and now everything is more complicated and expensive than ever.

Q: If I pray to God, will He listen?
A: You can waste His time telling Him what to do, or you can just get off His back and let Him code.

Q: What is the one true religion?
A: All systems have their advantages and disadvantages, so just pick the one that best suits your needs and don't let anyone put you down.

Q: Is God angry that Jesus was crucified?
A: Let's just say He's not going to any more meetings if He can help it, because that last one with the twelve managers and the food turned out to be murder.

Q: How can I protect myself from evil?
A: Change your password every month and don't make it a name, a common word, or a date like your birthday.

Q: Some people claim they hear the voice of God. Is this true?
A: They are much more likely to receive email.

Q: What was Aramaic?
A: The original Higher Order MACRO Language.

Q: What does that make Ancient Hebrew?
A: Aramaic++

Q: Why don't we see God at work?
A: God works at interrupt level. When He wants to do something, He suspends our processes, saves our registers and status, and swaps us out. Then He works His will on the world. Then He swaps us back in, restores our registers and status, and resumes our execution. To us, things appear to change by magic.
Why Engineers Don't Write Recipe Books
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chocolate Chip Cookies:
Ingredients:

1.) 532.35 cm3 gluten
2.) 4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
3.) 4.9 cm3 refined halite
4.) 236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
5.) 177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
6.) 177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
7.) 4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
8.) Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein
9.) 473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao
10.) 236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)


To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add ingredients one, two and three with constant agitation. In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogenous. To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally, add ingredient nine and ten slowly, with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of an exothermic reaction. Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm). Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank & Johnston's first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown. Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25C heat-transfer table, allowing the product to come to equilibrium.

PS - don't try this at home.

Commentary: I don't recommend 316 Stainless Steel for the baking sheet. This will only promote the formation of pure carbon compounds along the contact area. My own preference is for two sheets of 3 mil Al with contiguous seams and a 4mm thick enclosed air space filled with standard atmospheric.
Another testament to the impossibility of Plug and Play.
-------------------------------------------------------

Last year a friend of mine upgraded GirlFriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it's a memory hog leaving very little system resources for other applications. He is only now noticing that Wife 1.0 also is spawning Child-Processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomena was included in the product brochure or the documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application. Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself such that it is always launched at system initialization where it can monitor all other system activity. He's finding that some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5, and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run in the system at all, crashing the system when selected (even though they always worked fine before).

At installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to the installation of undesired Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw 55.8 and BrotherInLaw Beta release. Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day.

The features he'd like to see in the upcoming Wife 2.0 include:


I myself decided to avoid all of the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 2.0. Even here, however, I found many problems. Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 2.0 on top of Girlfriend 1.0. You must uninstall Girlfriend 1.0 first. Other users say this is a long standing bug which I should have been aware of. Apparently the versions of Girlfriend have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port. You think they would have fixed such a stupid bug by now. To make matters worse, The uninstall program for Girlfriend 1.0 doesn't work very well leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system.

Another thing that sucks -- all versions of Girlfriend continually pop-up little annoying messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0

BUG WARNING

Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources.

BUG WORK-AROUNDS To avoid the above bug, try installing Mistress 1.1 on a different system and never run any file transfer applications such as LapLink 6.0. Also, beware of similar shareware applications that have been known to carry viruses that may affect Wife 1.0.

Another solution would be to run Mistress 1.0 via a UseNet provider under an anonymous name. Here again, beware of the viruses which can accidentally be downloaded from the UseNet.
"What if Data (from "Star Trek, The Next Generation") were Microsoft Windows compatible?"

WORF: Captain, there are three Romulan warships uncloaking dead ahead.

PICARD: On screen.

The main viewing screen changes to a pattern of horizontal lines, each only a single pixel wide.

PICARD: Data, what's wrong here?

DATA: Captain, the main viewscreen does not have sufficient video memory to display an image of this size. May I suggest that you select a lower resolution?

PICARD: Make it so.

The screen blanks, and then an image appears, with big, blocky square pixels. Three objects appear in the center, which could be Romulan warbirds, but which actually look more like the aliens in Space Invaders.

PICARD: Data, open a hailing channel to the Romulans.

DATA: Aye, sir.

Data picks up an hourglass from the floor beside him, turns it over, and places it on the console in front of him. He punches some buttons on the console and sits motionless for several seconds. A flash of light blossoms from one of the Romulan ships on the viewscreen.

WORF: Incoming plasma torpedo, Captain!

PICARD: Shields up!

DATA: I'm sorry, Captain, but I am still attempting to complete your last instruction. I must ask you to wait until I have finished before you issue your next command.

PICARD: What on earth do you mean? Data, this is *important*! I want those shields up *right now*.

DATA: I'm sorry, Captain, but I am still attempting to complete your last instruction. I must ask you to wait until I have finished before you issue your next command.

LAFORGE: Allow me, captain. to Data Control-alt-delete, Data.

Data removes the hourglass from the console, and returns it to the floor.

DATA: The Romulans are not responding to my hails. Press my nose to cancel and return to Windows. Pull my left ear to close this communications channel which is not responding. You will lose any information sent by the Romulans.

LaForge pulls Data's left ear.

PICARD: Shields...

There is a tremendous explosion. The bridge shakes violently, and all the crew members are thrown to the floor. A shower of sparks erupts from Wesley Crusher's station at the helm, throwing Wesley back away from the console.

PICARD: Up, Data!

DATA: Aye, sir.

RIKER: All decks, damage report!

WORF: Captain, Ensign Crusher is injured. He appears to be unconscious.

Data picks up the hourglass again, places it on his console, and punches some more buttons. He waits a few seconds, then puts the hourglass back on the floor.

DATA: Shields are now up, captain.

PICARD: And not a moment too soon. Worf, lock all phasers on the lead Romulan ship.

WORF: Aye, sir. He punches buttons on the weapons console.

PICARD: Mr. Data, take the helm, and prepare for evasive action.

DATA: I am sorry, sir, but I do not have the proper device driver installed for that console.

PICARD: Well, damn it, install the right one.

DATA: Please insert Setup Implant 1 in my right nostril.

PICARD: Number One, where do we keep Data's setup implants?

RIKER: I left them with Geordi.

LAFORGE: (in a surprised voice) What!!? I thought you still had them!

PICARD: Data, don't you have device drivers stored in your internal memory?

DATA: Not found, sir. Please insert Setup Implant 1 in my right nostril.

PICARD: Data, I don't *have* Setup Implant 1.

DATA: Not ready reading right nostril. Abort, Retry, Fail?

PICARD: Abort!

DATA: Not ready reading right nostril. Abort, Retry, Fail?

PICARD: Well, fail, then!

DATA: Current nose is no longer valid.

Data walks over to the helm, and presses several buttons. The ship lurches, the images of the Romulan warships suddenly shift to one side of the viewscreen, and a high-pitched whining noise is heard coming from somewhere else in the ship.

LAFORGE: (alarmed) Data, what the hell are you doing?

PICARD: Number One, do we have a customer service number for Data?

RIKER: Yes sir, but last time I tried to call them, I got put on hold for two hours before I was able to talk to anyone. And that person wasn't knowledgeable about androids of Data's model. She specialized in industrial control robots.

Suddenly, the lights all go out, the viewscreen goes blank, and all the usual noise of fans, motors, and so on whines to a halt. After a few seconds, the red emergency lights come on. Data is standing by the console, absolutely motionless.

PICARD: What's going on?

LAFORGE: (checking the helm console) Lieutenant Data has caused a General Protection Violation in the warp engine core.

PICARD: These androids look really sharp, but you can't really do anything with them.

The shimmer of the transporter effect appears, and six Romulans in full battle dress materialize on the bridge. A seventh figure, a Ferengi, appears moments later.

FERENGI: (with a mercenary grin) Can I interest you in a Macintosh, Captain?
A thermodynamics professor had written a take home exam for his graduate students. It had one question: "Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with a proof."

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. One student, however wrote the following: First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for souls entering hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since, there are more than one of these religions and people don't belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant.

So, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.

Of course, if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.

(It was not revealed what grade the student got.)
Q: How many Internetters does it take to change a light bulb:

A: 435,235

1 to change the bulb

4 to tell him he should have done it differently

365 to point out spelling/grammar errors in first 5 posts

1834 to flame the spell checkers

4598 to correct spelling in spelling flames

6785 to say please move to alt.spelling.lite.bulb

15,467 to say stop cross posting to soc.women and alt.rape.all.men.are.scum, alt.adoption, and s.a.a.(m)

23,456 to endlessly debate which method is superior

236,789 to concatenate all articles to date, then quote them, only to say, "Me Too"

106,345 to quote the "Me Toos" to say, "Me Three"

1 to propose new alt.change.lite.bulb newsgroup

89,345 to say this is just what alt.physic.cold_fusion was meant for, leave it here

10,584 votes for alt.lite.bulb
High School Physics Questions:

-If you take one of those little crabs that resides about 2 miles deep in the ocean, and instantaneously transport it into deep space, in 15 seconds what would be the blast radius?

-You have 36 chickens in the back of a truck. If all of the chickens are flying inside the truck, is the mass of the truck the same, less than or more than if they were standing on the bed of the truck?
In one of the motht dethpicable actth of high-tech corporate terrorithm ever, a new viruth hath been unloothed within the Oracle Corporate network.

Known ath "Thpontaneouth Keyboard Lithp", it ith altho known to be capable of infecting printerth, ath well ath keyboardth. There ith no known cure. In Energy, we have already lotht over a dothen keyboardth and two DEC PrintTherverth. Our thervith contractth do not cover the irreparable harm cauthed by thith viruth, tho the cothtth could mount with frightening thpeed. That'th what maketh thith particular thtrain of viruth tho inthidiouth.

Tho far, the only known way of becoming infected ith by rethponding to, or printing, e-mail from thomeone whothe PThee ith infected. Reading the e-mail ith not known to be hatherdouth, but DO NOT UNDER ANY THIRCUMTHTANTHETH RETHPOND TO, PRINT, OR FORWARD ANY E-MAIL YOU THUTHPECT YOU HAVE RETHEIVED FROM AN INFECTED THYTHTEM. Luckily, thith viruth doeth not appear to affect a PThee'th boot thector, nor doeth it corrupt other data on your hard dithk, jutht keyboardth and printerth.

How will you know if you retheive e-mail from an infected computer? Alath, the thymptomth are not readily apparent to the untrained eye. We're only now beginning to underthtand how the viruth ith thpread, and do not yet know with any thertainty how to recognithe it. THERE ITH NOTHING OBVIOUTH ABOUT IT. Go with your inthtinctth. If you thuthpect there ith any pothibility that e-mail you have retheived containth thith viruth, I cannot thtreth enough the importanth of thith advithe - DO NOT RETHPOND TO IT!!! DO NOT PRINT IT!!!DO NOT FORWARD IT!!!

Again, I would like to point out that we have no reathon to believe that reading infected e-mail will put you or your PThee at rithk, but becauth of itth diabolical nature, you are advithed to immediately note the thourthe, delete it, and notify the Help Dethk. Ath thoon ath we dithcover the thecretth of how thith program workth, we will have a better idea of how you can recognithe e-mail carrying it. I will math-mail any utheful data ath thoon ath it becometh available.

There ith a thignificant reward being offered for any informathion leading to the arretht and convicthion of the perthon or perthonth rethponthible for thith dathtardly, dethpicable deed, OR OF ANYONE WHO KNOWINGLY THPREADTH IT. It ith one of the cleveretht pietheth of code we have ever theen. If you thee, thaw, or even think you MIGHT have theen, any evidenthe of the thpread of thith viruth within the Oracle intranet, pleathe notify the Help Dethk ath thoon ath pothible.

The only way we will thtop thith perthithtent and thelf-thuthtaining viruth ith by thpreading the word ath widely and quickly ath pothible - pleathe forward thith warning to everyone you know, and if you can athitht in any way in our vigorouth purthuit of the culpable party, pleathe do tho now. We will purthue all avenueth available to uth, we will leave no thtone unturned, in tracking down, apprehending, and prothecuting the perpetrator of thith reprehenthible act, and we will theek the makthimum pothible thententh upon convicthion.

Thintherely,

Jeff Eth.
Thythemth Adminithtrator
Oracle Energy
If Andersen Consulting made toasters:

It would be the first fully integrated holistic re-engineered simple yet radical interpersonal communicational wheat product leveraging visionary offering toaster on the market coming without the risk of carbonation degradation via an architecting process involving a conceptual design of worldwide breadth helping to deliver domestic food services for enterprise-wide value frameworks across the continuum of reorientation in an impactful environment which is strategically based, industry focused and aligned with your family's mission, vision and core values.

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. The catchy ad campaign would be entitled "Toasters for a small Planet" - a discussion with you and your dentist about IBM's incredible success in integrating toasters for the worldwide Olympic Games.

If Microsoft made toasters:

Every time you bought a loaf of bread you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'll still have to pay for it anyway.
Toaster'95 would weigh 15000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steel counter top), 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 want 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 a Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier.

If Xerox made toasters:

You could toast one-sided or two-sided. Successive slices would get lighter and lighter. The toaster would jam your bread for you.

If Radio Shack made toasters:

The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you could buy all the parts to build your own toaster.

If Oracle made toasters:

They would claim their toaster was compatible with all brands and styles of bread, but when you got it home you'd discover the Bagel Engine was still in development, the Croissant extension was three years away, and that indeed the whole appliance was just blowing smoke.

If Sun made toasters:

The toast would burn often, but you'd get a really good cuppa Java.

If Hewlett-Packard made toasters:

They would market the Reverse Toaster, which takes in toast and gives you regular bread.

If TRW 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 telephone number, and the blueprints for the box would be highly classified Government documents. The X-Files would have an episode about it.

If Sony made toasters:

The ToastMan, which would be barely larger than the single slice of bread it is meant to toast can be conveniently attached to your belt.

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 Franklin Mint made toasters:

Every month you would receive another lovely hand crafted piece of your authentic Civil War pewter toaster.
In a recent issue of "Feathers," the publication of the California Poultry Industry Federation, comes the following story:

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has a unique device for testing the strength of windshields on airplanes. The device is a gun that launches a dead chicken at a plane's windshield at approximately the speed the plane flies. The theory is that if the windshield doesn't crack from the carcass impact, it will survive a real collision with a bird during flight.

The British wanted to test a windshield on a newly developed, high-speed locomotive. They borrowed FAA's chicken launcher, loaded a chicken, and fired. The ballistic chicken shattered the windshield, went through the engineer's chair, broke an instrument panel, and embedded itself in the back wall of the engine cab.

The British were stunned and asked the FAA to recheck the test to see if everything was done correctly.

The FAA reviewed the test thoroughly and had one recommendation:

"Use a thawed chicken."

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Last modified: Apr.. 22, 2001