Article 213096 of rec.humor: Newsgroups: rec.humor Path: nntp-server.caltech.edu!avalon.softaware.com!nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov!hudson.lm.com!news.math.psu.edu!chi-news.cic.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!swrinde!sgigate.sgi.com!enews.sgi.com!lll-winken.llnl.gov!decwrl!amd!netcomsv!uu4news.netcom.com!netcomsv!uu3news.netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!cate3 From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate) Subject: Life 4.M Message-ID: [cate3DIEx9n.GrB@netcom.com] Organization: Cate3's Classic Comedy Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 21:34:34 GMT Lines: 357 Sender: cate3@netcom15.netcom.com Date: 8 Jun 89 13:00:11 PDT (Thursday) Subject: Life 4.M ------------------------------ What do you get when you cross 200K of apples and lots of garbage? a core dump ------------------------------ What do you get when you cross a Mormon with a Mexican Six months worth of stolen groceries ------------------------------ The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. ------------------------------ Cashier (looking at customer's credit card): "Why, I know someone with the exact same name as you!!!!!" Customer: "Really? Who?!?" ------------------------------ For me, life at Xerox began nearly 24 years ago at the Military Avenue facility of Scientific Data Systems. I think the clean desk policy began there. After the first rain you kept the top of your desk clean because the roof leaked. ------------------------------ Well, another motto that is like the others, but not from a restaurant, but a travel agency in Harvard Square: "Please go away again soon." When riding the first time I saw this, I thought it was really rude, and the I saw it was a travel agency... ------------------------------ Conversation between my friend Dave and a kid delivering his pizza: (A true story from back in December) Dave: How much? Pizza Kid: It's $8.50 Dave: Let me get a check. What's the date? Pizza Kid: December 7th Dave: Ahh, a day that will live in infamy! Pizza Kid: Whaaat? Dave: Today's the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Pizza Kid: Oh, well - I haven't seen the news yet. ------------------------------ Growing up in Texas, I've never figured out why the oil companies are so widely hated either. My research group is closely tied to the Oil industry. I would vouch that the oil industry is not particularly evil... although they do have a strong attachment to 1970's model IBM mainframes (that's why you don't see many postings from oil companies) that make them at least a little suspect... ------------------------------ Two friends are discussing politics on Election Day, each trying to no avail to convince the other to switch sides. Finally, one says to the other: ``Look, it's clear that we are unalterably opposed on every political issue. Our votes will surely cancel out. Why not save ourselves some time and both agree to not vote today?'' The other agrees enthusiastically and they part. Shortly after that, a friend of the first one who had heard the conversation says, ``That was a sporting offer you made.'' ``Not really,'' says the second. This is the third time I've done this today. ------------------------------ One day, the old man in charge of ringing matins at the local monastery died, so the abbot decided to advertise for a new bell ringer. After running an ad for several days in the local newspaper, an applicant finally showed up. Much to the abbot's dismay, this man had no arms. "I'm afraid," said the abbot, "that you don't have much of a career as a bell ringer ahead of you." "Nonsense," said the man. "Let me show you what I can do." So the abbot and the man go up into the bell tower, and the man proceeds to run full speed across the tower and throw himself face first into the bells. A lovely pealing sound results, and the abbot decides then and there to hire the man. "But I have one question," said the abbot. "How did you learn to ring bells that way." "Actually," replied the man, "I learned on the guitar." Spying a guitar across the room, he walked over there and began beating his head against the guitar. Beautiful music resulted, and the abbot was quite impressed. The man worked out fine as the monastery's bell ringer until several months later. While ringing the evening meal, the man missed the bells and plummeted from the bell tower, killing himself. In the resulting investigation, the chief of police called over the abbot and pointed out the dead man. "Do you recognize this man?" asked the police chief. "Hmmm," said the abbot. "I don't recall his name, but he plays guitar just like ringing a bell." ------------------------------ During Christmas break from college, the kid wanted to borrow his father's car to drive to a New Year's Eve party at his fraternity house. He lived in Massachusetts and the fraternity house was in Vermont. The father needed the car New Year's Day, and was concerned about the son hitting one of the roadblocks that police set up all over the place on New Year's Eve. The agreement that was reached was that the son would be allowed to use the car, but he would not drink at all. That was, of course, a big mistake on the part of the father, especially since the kid wasn't 21. So he drove to Vermont, got completely trashed, and attempted to drive home. Just before he reached Massachusetts he hit a roadblock. There were a few other cars stopped already, so he was told to get out of the car and stand in a line of people that were being administered the infamous sobriety test. Somehow the policeman skipped him, and he was left standing off to the side while the people behind him were showing the police officer how well they could touch their finger to their nose, walk a straight line, etc. At 7:00 AM his father got up to answer the doorbell. There were two state troopers there; one from Vermont and one from Massachusetts. They immediately asked him if he was the owner of [description of car]. He replied, "Yes, I am." One of the policeman asked him if he was driving the car the previous evening, and he said that his son had been the driver. The police officer asked to speak to his son. When the kid found himself in front of the two state troopers, he knew he was in some sort of trouble. But he also realized that his blood alcohol level had come down considerably, and that he would pass any test they might give him. So upon questioning, he admitted that he was driving the car, that he had been in Vermont, but when asked if he had been drinking he said, "No!" When the policemen asked if they could see his car, the kid was unable to remember the drive, and was worried that he may have hit something or someone. He said that the car was out back under that car port. And when the four of them walked out to look at the car, instead of looking at the car he had driven the night before, there was a Vermont State Police cruiser parked there. ------------------------------ The following memorandum was apparently circulated at the L.A. Times: Los Angeles Times: Intra-Office Correspondence To members of the Times staff: Because of the current outflow-inflow revenue imbalances, certain economy measures are being implemented throughout the newspaper for the duration of the difficulties. Your cooperation is necessary to help correct the imbalance more quickly. Starting immediately: The Times' travel office has been instructed to book employees in more economical hotels; as a guideline, for example, any hotel providing mints on pillows is excluded from this list. For your further guidance, a hotel & motel guide "Corporate America on $29.95 a day," is being reprinted for distribution. Any reporters/photographers traveling together will occupy only one room; for propriety's sake, they will sleep in shifts, one by day, the other by night. In case of a dispute over shift assignments, any editor at or above the rank of assistant metropolitan editor can be called in to mediate. When traveling, do not purchase local newspapers. These can be obtained from hotel check-out desks, in the seating areas of coffee shops where they have been discarded by others, or taken from so-called "street people" sleeping on benches and sidewalks. All reporters' notebooks will be issued by the city desk. Any request for new notebooks must be accompanied by turning in a used one, with all pages filled on both sides. When taking notes, please use abbreviations wherever possible; this will help to conserve. The same rule for turning in used items will hold for pens, and pencil stubs. New cassette tapes will be provided when old ones are turned in. To obtain further use from your tape recorder batteries, lick the battery head with the tip of your tongue and reinsert batteries in tape recorder. Like first-class travel, first-class postage is now prohibited, except under extraordinary circumstances. Postcards will be provided through your department secretary. Any reporter wishing to send items first-class can petition orally or in writing to the city desk for the necessary stamps. To avoid wastage of newsprint, street-vendor racks will be installed in the newsroom and throughout the building. Reporters deemed "need to know" can obtain coins from the city desk to purchase one (1) newspaper daily; others are encouraged to bring their newspapers from home, or to purchase them at work When dining out of town while on company business, employees are encouraged to follow current Administration guidelines and use catsup as a vegetable. To aid in our company "balance of payments," this fall, a company sales program, much akin to the Girl Scouts' cookie sales program -- will be instituted. Times-produced and Times-logo merchandise will be sold by employees in the course of their other duties i.e., reporters traveling around southern California for interviews and research. The Times' marketing division is preparing "kits," cases containing a sample array of Times merchandise, and order books. These kits should be available by December 1, and will be distributed by your supervisor. To conserve energy, rolling blackouts of computer and electric-light power will be observed throughout the editorial department. We will try to time these to avoid any conflict with your department deadlines. The Times is also instituting a suggestion plan to encourage employees' ideas on cost-cutting. Employees whose suggestions are adopted will be rewarded with free meal passes to the company cafeteria. ------------------------------ "Computers Made Stupid" Dr. Computer Science answers computer questions: Q: What are bits and bytes? A: Bits and Bytes are what a binary (base 2) computer uses to think. Binary computers only think about food, so the units of thought are expressed in terms of eating processes. A bit is the smallest amount of cauliflower your child can eat and still get away with saying that he has had a bit of cauliflower. A byte is an entire piece of cauliflower. A byte usually contains eight bits, unless you are eating on a DEC, some of which allow a byte to vary in size from a single bit, to 36 bits. This is possible only on a DEC since only there can your child manage to drop small pieces of cauliflower through the spaces between the floorboards, leaving fewer bits on the plate. With fewer bits on the plate, each bit is a larger percentage of the whole, so a byte gets smaller. Q: Can I put a double sided floppy disk in the envelope from a single sided floppy? A: No. You see, single sided disks were invented because there all have a single song on the other side. That's why they are the same size as a 45 rpm record. Unfortunately, the sleeves are hard to remove so playing the songs are harder than planned. Anyway, who has a turntable with a 45 RPM adapter that works? Well, you know how dirty all your records get? All that dirt is inside the record and the sleeve, so if you put a double sided floppy in the sleeve, all the dirt from the record side will jump on the data and crash your system. Q: My computer has 2 Meg of RAM. My friend's has 2048K of ROM. Who was more memory? A: Your Friend. RAM memory usually forgets everything when you turn off the power. That means that when the power is off, you have NO RAM memory. ROM memory remembers everything, even when the power is off. How much more memory does your friend have? That depends on how much you turn off your computer. You'd have to keep your computer turned on all the time for you to have the same amount of memory as your friend. Q: Why does my disk have free space? A: It's a bonus from the manufacturer, to make you think you got a bargain. Notice how that free space decreases as time goes on. That's because your disk is becoming less of a bargain. When the free space becomes zero, you'll have only the disk you paid for. This usually causes great depression and concern because then you realize how little the dollar buys. Q: Motherboard, daughter board, backplane, front panel, what does it all mean? A: That's all sales talk. First came office computers. They were big and impersonal. Then came personal computers. They were "user friendly". Now, a computer is no longer a single machine. We have computer families. The daddy computer talks to his daughters via the motherboard. Nobody drives, they all take the bus. Or the pulse train. Computers are sometimes like committees, they have several parts wasting time by doing the same thing at the same time. They argue a lot about who gets the front seat and who gets to drive. That's why they need bus arbitration. Q: What is cash memory, and why does it make computers faster? A: Cash memory is the part of the computer that remembers how much money you spent on your computer. The more you spend on your computer, the faster it will work. That's why the million dollar computers work so fast - they have more cash memory than you do. Q: But what if I paid by check or a credit card? A: The computer will find out. Every time you turn on the computer, the cash memory checks to see if the check was cashed. This is the memory check. The memory won't work until it's paid for. ------------------------------ More on sexually-reproducing operating systems: William Hamilton is a major figure in population genetics. I heard him speak at Harvard a few months ago on "Sex and Disease". It wasn't about STDs, but about his theory to explain the evolution of sexual reproduction. In his view, sex evolved as a way to ensure genetic diversity in a population, mainly in response to infectious agents. Diversity helps ensure that at least some members of a species will survive an onslaught of fatal infection. The recent viral/worm attacks on Unix systems suggests that operating systems may have to adopt similar strategies. Instead of a row of workstations running identical systems, and hence vulnerable to attack, computers will run diverse combinations of modules drawn from different sources. This will raise the chance of at least some systems remaining unaffected by the viral attack. Eventually the procedure for making a new system could be automated. Network protocols will be developed to enable a newly-booted machine to collect its software genome from some number (]1) of parent machines on the network, randomly selecting the source for each module. Multiple versions of modules could be stored and used in combination, or kept as backups when one version fails. Making this work will require considerably better interfaces between modules than current practice provides. Either rigorous standard of interface and contract between modules will be enforced (unlikely) or modules will have to flexibly adapt to the environment of other modules they find themselves in. This is probably all to the good. What is more worrisome is that sexual reproduction adds new evolutionary pressures that are quite unrelated to basic problems of survival (or computation). Systems will evolve elaborate mating rituals to attract each other's attention. These rituals will divert time and energy from the primary purposes the machines are supposed to serve. The rutting background processes could come to dominate the activity of the machine, much as the peacock's tail dominates its appearance. Even worse, the machines might develop genders differentiation, and male machines would have to spend most of their energy butting their heads together over the network in fights over the ownership of the female machines. Fortunately such problems can be dealt with the same way we deal with sexually unruly house pets. Only then will the name UNIX truly be deserved. ------------------------------------------------------------ 1995 Copyright by Henry Cate III All Rights Reserved The above collection can be forwarded for non commercial use as long as the signature file below is included The individual entries of the Life Collection are owned by the individual contributors who should be contacted if you wish to forward their entry. -- * * * * Henry Cate III [cate3@netcom.com] * * * * * * To learn how to buy the entire Life Humor Collection send * E-Mail to life@netcom.com with "Info" in the Subject * or check out http://www.offshore.com.ai/lifehumor * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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