IBM: Indefinitly Boggled Machine

Nike virus: Just Does It!

An old, bearded shepherd, with a crooked staff, walks up to a stone pulpit and says . . .

And lo it came to pass that the trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she had been called Amazon Dot Com.

And she said unto Abraham, her husband, Why doth thou travel far, from town to town, with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving thy tent?

And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, How, Dear?

And Dot replied, I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale and they will reply telling you which hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery by Uriahs Pony Stable (UPS).

Abraha} thkught long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums, as long as he could have his way with her.

And Dot said, There will be a lot of banging in the land. And Abraham replied, It is my most fervent wish that this be so.

And the drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had, at the top price, without ever moving from his tent.

But his success did arouse envy. A man named Maccabia did secrete himself inside Abrahams drum and was accused of insider trading.

And the young did take to Dot Coms trading as doth the greedy horsefly to camel dung.

They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short.

And lo the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums, that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums that would only work if you bought Brother Gates drumsticks.

And Dot did say, Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others. And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or as it came to be known, eBay, he said, We need a name of a service that reflects what we are.

And Dot replied, Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators.

Whoopee!, said Abraham.

No, YAHOO!, said Dot Com.

* Note: I am unsure whether this is true, but it is still funny.

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon.

In response to Bills comments, General Motors issued a press release stating (by Mr Welch himself):

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought Car95 or CarNT. But then you would have to buy more seats.
Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five per cent of the roads.
The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single general car fault warning light.
New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
The airbag system would say Are you sure? before going off.
Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.
GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the cars performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
Everytime GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
Youd press the start button to shut off the engine.

Ted: Last night my computer died. Ned: What did it die of? Ted: A

terminal illness

Microsoft Corporation has taken another step toward dominating every aspect of American life with the introduction of Contraceptive98, a suite of applications designed for users who engage in sex.

Microsoft has been a pioneer in peer-to-peer connectivity and plug and play. It believes these technologies will give it substantial leverage in penetrating the copulation enhancement market.

The product addresses two important user concerns: the need for virus protection and the need for a firewall to ensure the non-propagation of human beings.

The Contraceptive98 suite consists of three products: Condom98, DeFetus 1.0 (from Sementec), and AIDScan 2.1 (from Norton Utilities).

A free copy of Intercourse Explorer 4.0 is bundled in the package. The suite also comes in two expanded versions. Contraceptive98 Professional is the Client/Server edition, for professionals in the sexual services sector. Contraceptive98 Small Business Edition is a package for start-ups, aimed at the housewife and gigolo niches.

While Contraceptive98 does not address non-traditional copulatory channels, future plug-ins are planned for next year. They will be known as BackDoor, AuraLee, TitElation, and JerkOff.

OPERATION

Only one node in a peer-to-peer connection needs to install the package. At installation, the Condom98 software checks for minimum hardware. If the user meets the requirements, the product installs and is sufficiently scaleable to meet most requirements. After installation, operation commences. One caution is that the user must have sufficient RAM to complete the session. When the session is complete, a disconnect is initiated, and the user gets the message, It is now safe to turn off your partner.

DRAWBACKS

Usability testers report that frequent failures were a major concern during beta testing. General Protection Fault was the most serious error encountered. Early versions had numerous bugs, but most of these have been eliminated. The product needs to be installed each time its used.

CONCLUSION

Contraceptive98 is a robust product. Despite its drawbacks, it is a reasonably good value for its $49.95 price tag, and is far superior to its shareware version. Hopefully, future releases (of the software, that is) will add missing functionality, such as Backout and Restore, Uninterruptible Power Supply, and Onboard Camera.

Microsoft CEO Bill Gates is optimistic about Contraceptive98s potential. He recently said, Our contraceptive products will help users do to each other what weve been doing to our customers for years.

1. Word processors never display a cursor.2. You never have to use the spacebar when typing long sentences.3. All monitors display 2 inch high letters.4. High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, have easy-to-understand graphical interfaces.5. Those that dont will have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.6. Corollary: You can gain access to any information you want by simply typing ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES on any keyboard.7. Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing UPLOAD VIRUS. Viruses cause temperatures in computers, just like they do in humans. After a while, smoke billows out of disk drives and monitors.8. All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villains desktop computer, even if its turned off.9. Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesnt go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer as the characters come across the screen.10. All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backward. See #7, above)11. People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.12. A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.13. Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function.14. Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. In the movies, modems transmit data at two gigabytes per second.15. When the power plant/missile site/whatever o

OCR – Optical Character Recognition

A technology that can take written words and convert them back into computer-readable form, provided theyre in the right font, using the correct colors sometimes, at the right point size and pitch, dark enough on the paper, and youre prepared to spend several centuries correcting all the 1s that came out as ls, all the Os that came out as 0s, and all the :s that come out like ;s.

10. New seats would require everyone to have the same body size.

9. Wed all have to switch to Microsoft Gas.

8. The U.S. government would get subsidies from an automaker–a first.

7. The oil, alternator, gas, and engine warning lights would be replaced by a single General Car Fault warning light.

6. Sun Motorsystems would make a car that was solar-powered, twice as reliable, five times as fast, but ran on only 5% of the roads.

5. You would be constantly pressured to upgrade your car.

4. You could have only one person in the car at a time, unless you bought Car 95 or CarNT – but then you would have to buy more seats.

3. Occasionally your car would die for no apparent reason and you would have to restart it. Strangely, you would just accept this as normal.

2. Every time the lines on the road were repainted, youd have to buy a new car.

1. People would get excited about the new features of Microsoft cars, forgetting that the same features had been available from other carmakers for years.

In the Apple vs. IBM/Microsoft lawsuit, Apple is ahead on points. After a
long weekend of preparation, the Apple lawyer met the IBM lawyer outside
the courtroom and was overheard to say, You look like I feel.

[Ed: Which reminds me of the cartoon that depicts a newspaper stand
displaying the headline, Lotus sues Paperback Software for millions
over look and feel. and a hooker standing in front of the newstand
with a sign that says, Look and Feel, only $50. ]

— Scott