What is a computer's first sign of old age? Loss of memory. What does a baby computer call his father? Data. What is an astronaut's favorite key on a computer keyboard? The space bar. What happened when the computer fell on the floor? It slipped a disk. To err is human; but to really screw things up requires a computer. Why was there a bug in the computer? It was looking for a byte to eat. What is a computer virus? A terminal illness. For a computer programming class, I sat directly across from someone, and our computers were facing away from each other. A few minutes into the class, she got up to leave the room. I reached between our computers and switched the inputs for the keyboards. She came back and started typing and immediately got a distressed look on her face. She called the tutor over and explained that no matter what she typed, nothing would happen. The tutor tried everything. By this time I was hiding behind my monitor and quaking red-faced. I typed, "Leave me alone!" They both jumped back as this appeared on their screen. "What the..." the tutor said. I typed, "I said leave me alone!" The kid got real upset. "I didn't do anything to it, I swear!" It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. The conversation between them and HAL 2000 went on for an amazing five minutes. Me: "Don't touch me!" Her: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit your keys that hard." Me: "Who do you think you are anyway?!" Etc. Finally, I couldn't contain myself any longer, and fell out of my chair laughing. After they had realized what I had done, they both turned beet red. Funny, I never got more than a C- in that class. "Proposed shows for a new cable channel targeting information systems professionals." This Old Mainframe Host Bob Vila revamps a Univac and shows you how you can turn an old PC into a functional doorstep or other decorative object. Name That Software Contestants attempt to identify well-known business programs by looking at the least number of lines of code. My Three Suns Neighbors wonder why Steve Douglas keeps three UNIX based work-stations in a suburban neighborhood. Wang Can Cook Chef Charles Wang blends together software in an incomprehensible manner from companies he's purchased. Studio guests grudingly pay ever higher prices for his creations. Leave it to Spindler The Spindler tries to earn money by selling apples but finds he can't sell them for as much as he paid for them; tries to make it up in volume. Ward, June and the Board of Directors sigh. WordPerfect Strangers Larry decides that using groupware would be a good way to meet women, but Balki's laser printer explodes ruining any chances of connectivity. Mayberry CPU Andy discovers that his digital clock has more intelligence than Goober. Aunt Bee debugs Floyd's electronic cash register. The Honeymooners Ralph dreams up a way to hit it rich with a 3-D word processor, but it turns out to be vaporware. Ed makes millions creating "Norton's Utilities". Mr. Rom's Neigborhood Mr. Rom puts young ones to sleep by reading selections from various IBM documentation. Says Me Street Muppet like forms of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy show children how to work and play together on the information highway. Large character known as Big BlueBird is a favorite of the kids although no one really knows why. Dear Abby: The letter signed "Computer Widow" grabbed my attention because I, too, am a computer widow. My husband, "Erik," is at work now, so I'm writing this on his computer. But when he's home, his computer is his first love. I refer to it as "Belle Packard... the other woman." Erik spends more money on her than he spends on me, and she gets a lot more attention than I do. But I'm not complaining. At least I know where he is and what he's doing. When he's gazing fondly into the monitor of his sweet Belle, he's not out chasing women and bringing home God-knows-what, or sitting in a bar somewhere. The old saying, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" is my motto, so I reminded Erik that I am "computer-challenged," and asked him to teach me something about his first love. (He was thrilled. I've learned a lot, and I'm no longer intimidated by "Belle." I suspect that "Computer Widow" has some deeper problems, but I also think a little less nagging would improve the situation. The more you harp, the more they shut you out. (This is my second marriage, and I learned a lot from my first one.) Erik and I are very happy together, and he does spend time with me. But I also understand that he needs time alone as much as I do, so we give each other that space when it's needed. I married my best friend, so if he spends a little too much time with "Belle"....so what? I wouldn't trade him for the world. (Signed) Computer Widow in Virginia Abby's response....... Dear Computer Widow: Obviously, you are sufficiently secure in your marriage to be comfortable with your husband's pursuing his own interests. You are to be commended for your realistic and healthy attitude. This computer paper really proves that recycled materials are just as high quality as brand new. You'd never know that you were holding used toilet paper, would you? Dogs and Computers: Same or Different? * Favorite Food Dogs: kibbles Computers: bits * Method used to end undesirable behavior Dogs: hit with rolled up newspaper Computers: hit control-alt-delete * After destruction of personal property D: dog not found C: file not found * Favorite trick D: roll over C: play dead * Comic-page hero D: Dogbert C: Dilbert * Fun way to mess with their heads D: peanut butter on roof of mouth C: peanut butter in CD-ROM drive * Consequence of virus D: replace valuable carpeting C: replace valuable data * Widely ignored government mandate D: leash law C: Communications Decency Act * Waste disposal tool D: pooper-scooper C: uninstaller (necessary only on Win-tel machines!) * Sensitive internal procedures D: must be undertaken by fully qualified professional C: may be undertaken by that guy at work who fixed "one kind-of like this" once * Method of marking territory D: lifting leg C: "Designed for Windows 95" * Unique behavior D: lick and drag C: click-and-drag * Inexplicable physical feature D: dewclaw C: scroll lock key * Estimated lifespan D: 12 years C: 12 months * At end of useful life D: euthanasia C: tax deduction Top 15 Reasons Dogs Don't Use Computers 15. Can't stick their heads out of Windows '95. 14. Fetch command not available on all platforms. 13. Hard to read the monitor with your head cocked to one side. 12. Too difficult to "mark" every web site they visit. 11. Can't help attacking the screen when they hear "You've Got Mail." 10. Fire hydrant icon simply frustrating. 9. Involuntary tail wagging is dead giveaway they're browsing www.pethouse.com instead of working. 8. Keep bruising noses trying to catch that MPEG Frisbee. 7. Not at all fooled by Chuckwagon Screen Saver. 6. Still trying to come up with an emoticon that signifies tail wagging. 5. Three words: Carpal Paw Syndrome. 4. 'Cause dogs ain't GEEKS! Now, *cats*, on the other hand... 3. SIT and STAY were hard enough; GREP and AWK are out of the question! 2. Saliva-coated mouse gets mighty difficult to maneuver 1. TrO{gO DsA[M,bN HyAqR4tDc TgrOo TgYPmE WeIjTyH P;AzWqS,. (Too Damn Hard To Type with paws!) TEN REASONS A STUPID GIRL IS BETTER THAN A SMART COMPUTER 1. She doesn't want to play chess. 2. A computer costs $2,000; she costs a few beers. 3. Bodily fluids do not mar her finish. 4. She's not a fat,ugly chick acting sexy in an online chat room. 5. You can upgrade without having to learn new software. 6. Hard drive and joystick are more than fancy euphemisms to her. 7. She performs better when you spill beer on her. 8. You can still use her when she crashes. 9. There's no chance Bill Gates has ever touched her. 10. The less memory, the better. Q: How many Unix gurus does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: One, but first he has to determine the correct path. Q: How many Unix hacks does it take to change a light bulb? A: As many as you want; they're all virtual, anyway. Rules Of Computer Order You will never have an extra blank disk. If you do bring along a blank disk, you won't need it. If you don't bring along a blank disk, it will be the only available opportunity to obtain a copy of a hitherto unattainable and uniquely appropriate program. If someone else is watching while you are doing anything on the computer, anything at all, it will screw up (that's a technical term). The percentage chances of screwing up increase in direct proportion to the size of your audience. No matter how simple it seems to you, your explanation will be more than they want to know. You will amaze yourself at how much you know. You will amaze your mother at how much you know about computers. You will always have one disk envelope too few. Or too many. The only pieces of data you will ever lose are the ones you were going to save just as soon as you finished typing a couple more lines. The update of your program will use the keys for something entirely different in this version than it did when you first learned it. You will not understand it the first time you read it in the manual. You will understand it better the next time you read the manual. For no discernible reason. When you are late for an interview and need a last minute copy of your resume your printer will go down. It will always go down. It doesn't care. Nowhere in your repair manual will it ever tell you what you really need to do, which is to turn the darn thing off and get yourself a cup of coffee/tea. You will never know what a user file is. The price of anything you buy will stay the same until the actual impact of your money on the bottom of the cash drawer, at which time it will automatically re-list itself in next Thursday's paper at 30% less. Staring at the screen for 97 continuous minutes will not necessarily reveal to you the secret location of any colon that should have been typed in as a semi. Or vice versa. It will always seem like your friend got a better deal. Top Reasons Computers Are Female No one but their creator understands their internal logic. Even your smallest mistakes are immediately committed to memory for future reference. The native language used to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else. The message, "Bad command or filename," is about as informative as "If you don't know why I'm mad at you, then I'm certainly not going to tell you." As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it. Picky, picky, picky. They hear what you say, but not what you mean. Beauty is only shell deep. When you ask whats wrong, they say "nothing". Can produce incorrect results with alarming speed. Always turning simple statements into big productions. Small talk is important You do the same thing for years, and suddenly it's wrong. They make you take the garbage out. Miss a period and they go wild. When reminiscing about your first one, you wonder how the hell you ever managed to live with it. Try getting your old one to talk to your new one. When you want it most, it will freeze for no reason. With the covers off and up close, they all look the same. As soon as you have one, a better one is just around the corner. No one but the creator understands the internal logic. Top Reasons Computers Are Male 15. They're heavily dependent on external tools and equipment. 14. They periodically cut you off right when you think you've established a network connection. 13. They'll usually do what you ask them to do, but they won't do more than they have to and they won't think of it on their own. 12. They're typically obsolete within five years and need to be traded in for a new model. Some users, however, feel they've already invested so much in the damn machine that they're compelled to remain with an underpowered system. 11. They get hot when you turn them on, and that's the only time you have their attention. 10. They have a lot of data but are still clueless. 9. A better model is always just around the corner. 8. They look nice and shiny until you bring them home. 7. It is always necessary to have a backup. 6. They'll do whatever you say if you push the right buttons. 5. The best part of having either one is the games you can play. 4. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on. 3. The lights are on but nobodys home. 2. Big power surges knock them out for the night. 1. Size does matter. Q. Who was the world's first computer expert? A. Eve, She had an apple in one hand and a wang in the other. THE COMPUTER EXPERT'S GLOSSARY ADA: Something you need to know the name of to be an Expert in Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA awareness." BUG: An elusive creature living in a program that makes it incorrect. The activity of "debugging," or removing bugs from a program, ends when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed. CACHE: A very expensive part of the memory system of a computer that no one is supposed to know is there. DESIGN: What you regret not doing later on. DOCUMENTATION: Instructions translated from Swedish by Japanese for English speaking persons. ECONOMIES OF SCALE: The notion that bigger is better. In particular, that if you want a certain amount of computer power, it is much better to buy one biggie than a bunch of smallies. Accepted as an article of faith by people who love big machines and all that complexity. Rejected as an article of faith by those who love small machines and all those limitations. HARDWARE: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked. INFORMATION CENTER: A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is to tell you why you cannot have the information you require. INFORMATION PROCESSING: What you call data processing when people are so disgusted with it they won't let it be discussed in their presence. MACHINE-INDEPENDENT PROGRAM: A program that will not run on any machine. MEETING: An assembly of computer experts coming together to decide what person or department not represented in the room must solve the problem. MINICOMPUTER: A computer that can be afforded on the budget of a middle-level manager. OFFICE AUTOMATION: The use of computers to improve efficiency in the office by removing anyone you would want to talk with over coffee. ON-LINE: The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer. PASCAL: A programming language named after a man who would turn over in his grave if he knew about it. PERFORMANCE: A statement of the speed at which a computer system works. Or rather, might work under certain circumstances. Or was rumored to be working over in Jersey about a month ago. PRIORITY: A statement of the importance of a user or program. Often expressed as a relative priority, indicating that the user doesn't care when the work is completed so long as he is treated less badly than someone else. QUALITY CONTROL: Assuring that the quality of a product does not get out of hand and add to the cost of its manufacture or design. REGRESSION ANALYSIS: Mathematical techniques for trying to understand why things are getting worse. STRATEGY: A long-range plan whose merit cannot be evaluated until sometime after those creating it have left the organization. SYSTEMS PROGRAMMER: A person in sandals who has been in the elevator with the senior vice president and is ultimately responsible for a phone call you are to receive from your boss. When I went to college in the 1980's, I heard a lot of words like "data input" and "beta version." They confused me. I wanted desperately to know what people were talking about, what Big Secret resided in the computer industry. Now that I've worked in a computer company for the last few years, I've gained an insider's perspective. I decided to share my knowledge with the uninitiated by creating the following brief, handy glossary: Alpha. ------ Software undergoes alpha testing as a first step in getting user feedback. Alpha is Latin for "doesn't work." Beta. ----- Software undergoes beta testing shortly before it's released. Beta is Latin for "still doesn't work." Computer. --------- Instrument of torture. The first computer was invented by Roger "Duffy" Billingsly, a British scientist. In a plot to overthrow Adolf Hitler, Duffy disguised himself as a German ally and offered his invention as a gift to the surly dictator. The plot worked. On April 8, 1945, Adolf became so enraged at the "Incompatible File Format" error message that he shot himself. The war ended soon after Hitler's death, and Duffy began working for IBM. CPU. ---- Central Processing Unit. The CPU is the computer's engine. It consists of a hard drive, an interface card and a tiny spinning wheel that's powered by a running rodent - a gerbil if the machine is a old machine, a ferret if it's a Pentium and a ferret on speed if it's a Pentium II. Default Directory. ------------------ Black hole. Default directory is where all files that you need disappear to. Error message. -------------- Terse, baffling remark used by programmers to place blame on users for the program's shortcomings. File. ----- A document that has been saved with an unidentifiable name. It helps to think of a file as something stored in a file cabinet - except when you try to remove the file, the cabinet gives you an electric shock and tells you the file format is unknown. Hardware. --------- Collective term for any computer-related object that can be kicked or battered. Help. ----- What we all need. Actually, it is the feature that assists in generating more questions. When the help feature is used correctly, users are able to navigate through a series of Help screens and end up where they started from without learning anything. A Software engineer, hardware engineer and departmental manager were on their way to a meeting in Switzerland. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes failed. The car careened out of control, bouncing off guard rails until it miraculously ground to a scraping halt along the mountainside. The occupants of the car were unhurt, but they had a problem. They were stuck halfway down the mountain in a car with no brakes. "I know" said the manager. " Let's have a meeting, propose a Vision, formulate a Mission Statement, define some Goals, and through a process of Continuous Improvement, find a solution to the critical problems and we'll be on our way." "No," said the hardware engineer. "I've got my Swiss army knife with me. I can strip down the car's braking system, isolate the fault, fix it, and we'll be on our way." "Wait," said the software engineer. "Before we do anything, shouldn't we push the car back to the top of the mountain and see if it happens again?" Q. How do you recognise a doctor who used to be a software engineer? A. When you have a heart attack they send you back home to see if it happens again. 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 on board. With his team's software, he reasoned, the plane was unlikely to even taxi as far as the runway, let alone take off. World War III. The US has succeeded in building a computer able to solve any strategic or tactical problem. Military leaders are assembled in front of the new machine and instructed to feed a difficult tactical problem into it. They describe a hypothetical situation to the computer and then ask the pivotal question: attack or retreat? The computer hums away for an hour and then comes up with the answer: YES. The generals look at each other, somewhat stupefied. Finally one of them submits a second request to the computer: YES WHAT? Instantly the computer responded: YES SIR. A doctor, architect, and computer systems analyst were discussing which was the first profession. The doctor said, "God took a rib from man and made women". That was a great medical accomplishment, therefor medicine was the first profession. The architect said, "They were in the garden of eden weren't they? That wonderful garden was created from chaos, that took careful planning and design work. Therefor architecture was the first profession." The computer systems analyst said, "Where do you think all that confusion came from?" In the beginning, God created the bit. And the bit was a zero; nothing. On the first day, He toggled the 0 to a 1, and the Universe was. (In those days, bootstrap loaders were simple, and "active low" signals didn't yet exist.) On the second day, God's boss wanted a demo, and tried to read the bit. This being volatile memory, the bit reverted to a 0. And the universe wasn't. God learned the importance of backups and memory refresh, and spent the rest of the day (and his first all-nighter) reconstructing the universe. On the third day, the bit cried "Oh, Lord! If you exist, give me a sign!" And God created rev 2.0 of the bit, even better than the original prototype. Those in Universe Marketing immediately realized that "new and improved" wouldn't do justice to such a grand and glorious creation. And so it was dubbed the Most Significant Bit, or the Sign bit. Many bits followed, but only one was so honored. On the fourth day, God created a simple ALU with 'add' and 'logical shift' instructions. And the original bit discovered that by performing a single shift instruction, it could become the Most Significant Bit. And God realized the importance of computer security. On the fifth day, God created the first mid-life kicker, rev 2.0 of the ALU, with wonderful new features, and said "Screw that add and shift stuff. Go forth and multiply." And God saw that it was good. On the sixth day, God got a bit overconfident, and invented pipelines, register hazards, optimizing compilers, crosstalk, restartable instructions, microinterrupts, race conditions, and propagation delays. Historians have used this to convincingly argue that the sixth day must have been a Monday. On the seventh day, an engineering change introduced "name of buggy component deleted to keep lawyers happy" into the Universe, and it hasn't worked right since. Q: Did you hear about the Microsoft crystal ball? A: Ask it something and it replies: "Answer unclear. Add 20 Meg of RAM and ask again later." Q: How many MS engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: None, they just define darkness as an industry standard! Q: Why don't the British build computers? A: Because they can't figure out how to make them leak oil! Q. What do you get when you cross 200K of apples and lots of garbage? A. A core dump Have you heard about the new Cray? It's so fast, it executes an infinite loop in 6 seconds. Have you heard about the new Cray? It's so fast, it requires TWO halt instructions to stop it! Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk storage, a screen resolution of 1024x1024 pixels, relies entirely on voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket, and costs $300. What's the first question that the computer community asks? "Is it PC compatible?" What do you call a computer scientist? It doesn't matter what you call him. He's too involved with the computer to come anyway. What do miniskirts and hard disks have in common? Access time. Isn't it odd that all the members of the Association for Computing Machinery are human? (I've been thinking of signing my home computer up.) Why is "256 Ways To Make Love" the most quoted book on the Internet? It IS the Fucking Manual What do Unix sysadmins do when they're horny? Mount a filesystem. Why do Computer Science majors smell so bad. So that blind students can hate them too. How do you tell an extrovert computer scientist? He looks at *your* shoes when he talks to you. 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 68040 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, and 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 top of form feed of fiche and chips and a bucket of baudot. Mini was in conversation mode and expanded on ambiguous arguments while Micro gave the occasional acknowledgements, 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; his hardware was in danger of overflowing its output buffer, a hang-up that Micro had consulted his analyst about. "Core", 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 coltage spike into his main supply, whereupon he fell over with a head crash and went to sleep. "Computers!", she thought, as she recompiled herself. "All they ever think of is hex!" There was a doctor, a civil engineer, and a computer scientist sitting around late one evening, and they got to discussing which was the oldest profession. The doctor pointed out that according to Biblical tradition, God created Eve from Adam's rib. This obviously required surgery, so therefore that was the oldest profession in the world. The engineer countered with an earlier passage in the Bible that stated that God created order from the chaos, and that was most certainly the biggest and best civil engineering example ever, and also proved that his profession was the oldest profession. The computer scientist leaned back in her chair, and with a sly smile responded, "Yes, but who do you think created the chaos?" The world can spot a computer science student from miles off. Ten sure clues: 1. When dating: ends up together in front of a computer. 2. In the street: he's the one carrying a box of floppy discs. 3. In discussion: is the one who starts laughing hysterically when the topic of computer reliability is brought up. 4. Anywhere: Red watery eyes, and sleepy if awake before 4pm. 5. Bumper sticker on car: My ware is harder, bigger and faster than yours. 6. Thinks a perfect Saturday Night is a fast ftp-connection to a base with plenty of gifs, and a case of Heineken. 7. Cancels dates because he's too occupied with a new mud. 8. Keeps being caught with Playboy by the scanner. 9. Keeps more than 16 sheets of printouts on his desk. 10. Thinks IRC is the perfect way to get dates. Here are The Three Laws of Secure Computing (TLSC) 1) Don't buy a computer 2) If you do buy a computer, don't plug it in. And, finally, 3) If you do plug it in, sell it and return to step 1. At Calgary, the computer science department has an award called the Williams Cup (as in old stained coffee cup), which is given yearly to the student who hands in the most imaginative rendition of a regular programming assignment. Anyway, as the story goes, the cup was awarded to a student who'd done a desk calculator assignment. Seems that the prof hadn't specified that you had to do it in decimal, so his/her program did math with _roman_numerals_. The clincher for the award must have been his/her programming style, since of course, the documentation was in _latin_ What Does It All Mean? In Douglas Adams' book "The Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy", there is a story of how a race of extra-terrestrials built a massive computer which would provide a final answer to all of their questions. It took generations to build, but finally they got the computer working. They fed in copious amounts of data, and then programmed the question, "What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?" The computer clicked, whined, shook, and worked feverishly for many years. Upon the appointed hour when an answer was due, huge crowds gathered to witness the event. The computer was going to give them The Answer to the meaning of life. A small slip of paper dropped out of a slot on the front of the monolithic computer. The chief scientist stepped up and retrieved The Answer. Taking the paper, he turned to the assembled crowd and intoned The Answer to all their questions. "Forty-two" said the chief scientist. The Smart House By: Michael Schrage (columnist for the Los Angeles Times.) Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's largest cable television company, is in talks to launch a unique pilot project in conjunction with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Microsoft Corp. to design a "smart home." The home automation industry is expected to triple in size, from $1.7 billion this year to more than $5.1 billion by the year 2000. November 28, 1995 Moved in at last. 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 personal computer, 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 oven a few degrees for my pizza. Everything nice and cozy when I arrived. Maybe 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, coffee maker - everything. Carefully unplugged and replugged all the appliances. Nothing. Called the cable company (but not from the kitchen phone). They refer me to the utility. The utility insists the problem was in the software. So the software company runs some remote telediagnostics via my house processor. Their expert system claims 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 because sensor memory confirmed that there hadn't actually been a power surge, the kitchen's logic sequence was confused so it couldn't 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 hit the window. When these vibrations mix with a 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 the 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, the 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 glass is everywhere. Or course, the security sensors detect nothing. I look at a message slowly throbbing on my personal computer screen: "Welcome to HomeWrecker!!! Now the Fun Begins... (Be it ever so humble, there's no virus like HomeWrecker...)" I get out of the house. Fast. December 18 They think they've 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 toilets. Nevertheless, the Exorcists (as the anti-virus SWAT members like to call themselves) are confident the worst is over. "HomeWrecker is pretty bad," one tells me, "but consider yourself lucky you didn't 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 the SmartHouse people explicitly states that all claims 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 might 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. I notice in today's NY Times that, in the wake of _DOS for Dummies_, the insult-the-customer bandwagon is picking up steam. New titles being advertised include "WordPerfect 6 For Dummies" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide To WordPerfect 6". Here are some titles in the genre that I am currently working on: Lotus For Losers Procomm For Pinheads The Absolute Moron's Guide To Quicken WordStar 2000 For The Suckers Who Bought It Kiplinger's Computer Associates Simply Money For People Who Weren't Loved Enough As Children. OS/2 offers 'Neko', a program that sends a skittish kitten chasing after the mouse cursor. As desktop computers become more powerful, users will have more clock cycles available for such distractions. We offer the following vision of what may be to come: Neko for Windows NT: A stick-figure Bill Gates ambles after the mouse. If he passes a window he stops to point out the interesting features and makes promises as to what future versions will offer. Neko for OS/2 version 2.2: An elephant appears, and runs away from the mouse in terror. When it runs into a window, it knocks itself unconscious. Neko for Taligent: As for OS/2 2.2, but the elephant is coloured pink. Neko for Apple Power-PC: 'Phil', Apple's bow-tied 'agent', runs after the mouse with a mousetrap. If he runs into a window he drops the mousetrap onto his foot and jumps around the screen howling in pain. And finally, Neko for SGI Indy: A fully rendered velociraptor stomps after the mouse. If it runs into a window, it tears it apart and eats it. Top Ten Ways A Computer Nerd Can Impress His Date 10. Flash the big wads of tens and twenties you created with your color laser printer and top-notch graphics program. 9. Spend an evening playing floppy disks backward, listening for the secret messages about Satan. 8. Invite her back to your place to show her the etchings on your Newton MessagePad. 7. Let the lady go first when you reach the virtual reality escalator. 6. Serenade her with your MIDI-compatible drum pads. 5. Have your dinner illuminated by the soft glow of an active-matrix LCD panel. 4. If you're getting serious, consider a set of "his 'n' her" system unit keys. 3. Drive her crazy by murmuring tender love words with the help of a French-speaking voice synthesizer. 2. Never type on your date's laptop computer without permission, particularly if the system is on her lap. 1. When things get tough, simply ask yourself, "What would Bill Gates do in a situation like this? A Software guy, a Hardware guy and a Mainframe guy are driving across the desert when they get a flat tire. The Mainframe guy says, "Well, now we have to get a new car." The Hardware guy says, "I got a better idea. Let's rotate the tires and see if we can isolate the problem." The Software guy says, "Nah, let's run it another thirty miles and see if the problem reoccurs." A lady on the airplane strikes up a conversation with the fellow sitting in the next seat, "..and where are you going?" "I'm going to San Francisco to a Unix convention," he replys. "Eunuchs convention?" she questions. "I didn't know there were that many of you." 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, daughterboard, 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 cache memory, and why does it make computers faster? A: Cache 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 cache 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 housepets. Only then will the name Unix truly be deserved. Heard on a local radio station: From the person who dropped a rubber band into his computer and all it will do now is make snap decisions... MURPHY'S LAWS OF COMPUTING When computing, whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen. When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it's probably obsolete. The first place to look for information is in the section of the manual where you least expect to find it. When the going gets tough, upgrade. For every action, there is an equal and opposite malfunction. To err is human . . . to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human, it is downright natural. He who laughs last probably made a back-up. If at first you do not succeed, blame your computer. A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine. The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions. A computer program will always do what you tell it to do, but rarely what you want to do. |
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