A teacher asked one of her pupils, Whats the nations capital?

The reply was, Washington DC

On being asked what the DC stood for, the pupil added, Dot com!

Bill Gates dies and is up at the pearly gates.
St Peter: Well, youve got a choice. Have a look around here. Pop down to Hell and see what Satan has to offer. Check us out, and then let me know your decision.
Bill has a look around heaven. Lotss of somber people singing hymns, praising the Lord .
He goes down to Hell. There are beautiful beaches, lots of sun, sand, attractive women . Long cool drinks that never get you drunk. He loves it. He goes back to St Peter.
Gates: Look, I know youre really doing good things here, but Hell seems more with it. More my kind of scene, you know what I mean? No hard feelings, but I pick Hell.
St Peter: No worries. Youve got it.
Bill finds himself back in Hell, neck deep in fire and brimstone, suffering eternal torment. He cant figure it out.
Gates: Hey! St Peter! Where are the beautiful girls and long beaches and cool drinks?
St Peter: Sorry if you got confused, That was just the beta version

An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano!
Memory was something that you lost with age
A CD was a bank account
And if you had a 3 1/2 inch floppy You hoped nobody found out!
Compress was something you did to garbage Not something you did to a file
And if you unzipped anything in public Youd be in jail for awhile!
Log on was adding wood to a fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode!
Cut – you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue
A web was a spiders home
And a virus was the flue!
I guess Ill stick to my pad and paper
And the memory in my head I hear nobodys been killed in a computer crash
But when it happens they wish they were dead!

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated that:

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.

In response to Bills comments, General Motors issued a news release stating:

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 you painted 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 youd 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 work on 5 per cent of the roads

The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single general car default warning light

Now 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 grabbed 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)

Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn 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

10,000 years from now Aliens will land on Earth and ask why no one got there Were Coming message. It is discovered that the Aliens had posted it to alt.test and no one saw it. Aliens laugh at SETI at Home idea as akin to reading tea leaves.

Hello! The SETI project is a scam. It is run by the NSA to use the massed CPU cycles of the first world to break peoples PGP passwords via brute force attacks.

Opps! Sorry, but two years from now the SETI people will announce there was a bug in their software and youll all have to start over.

The major American TV networks will launch a similar project in which the worlds PCs will be harnessed to cull through archives looking for a plot, or even a punch line, they havent used eight hundred times before.

SETI project is revealed to be part of Intel/Microsoft plot to gain access to computers of a segment of the population that traditionally not fallen for the free AOL account trap.

Well, if if youre looking for intelligence you wont find it among people who pay thousands for the fastest CPUs they can get then bog the machines down trying to make sense out of background radiation.

Extra terrestrials are flabbergast to find out when spent years analyzing the line noise created by stars they were moving around to spell out Hello humans in the heavens.

The home computer of one Penny Beatrice Century of Moreno, California churns out the vital link to communicating with other-worldly beings. But her husband accidentally deletes it trying to hide evidence of all the nudie .jpgs he had downloaded the night before.

JPL probe to find out the pranksters behind the nude photo of Uma Thurman painted on the Mars 17 probe also uncovers that the same group came up with the SETI at Home screen saver hoax. Forty two scientists are fired.

After decades of work by thousands it is decided the SETI at Home project was a well meaning but doomed, pointless task. But even its critics say it gave hope to many and thus on the whole was not intricacy evil.

(From Internet Oracularities)

There is a computer virus that is being sent across the Internet. If you receive an e-mail message with the subject line Free Money, DO NOT read the message. DELETE it immediately, UNPLUG your computer, then BURN IT to ASHES in a government-approved toxic waste disposal INCINERATOR.

Once a computer is infected, it will be TOO LATE. Your computer will begin to emit a vile ODOR. Then it will secrete a foul, milky DISCHARGE. Verily, it shall SCREECH with the tortured, monitor-shattering SCREAM of 1,000 hell-scorched souls, drawing unwanted attention to your cubicle from co-workers and supervisors alike. After violently ripping itself from the wall, your computer will punch through your office window as it STREAKS into the night, HOWLING like a BANSHEE. Once free, it will spend the rest of its days TORTURING household PETS and MOCKING the POPE.

Some filthy, disgusting miscreant . . . some no-good, low-down, good-for-nothing DIRTY SNAKE, in twisted pursuit of her own sadistic dreams, is sending this virus across the Net via an e- mail entitled Free Money. What is so terrifying about this virus is that you do not even to have to open the e-mail for it to activate. In fact, you do not even need to RECEIVE the e- mail. You do not even need to OWN a COMPUTER. Free Money can infect even minor HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES.

How it does this with straight ASCII code is, frankly, a matter of some debate . . . but BELIEVE YOU US, if this werent a SERIOUS situation, we wouldnt be discussing it in ALL CAPS.

So for the LOVE OF GOD, forward this e-mail to all those you claim to care about, all those you purport to love. Dont do it later! Do it NOW! Now! Now! NOW! NOW! NOW!

1. Log on, wait a sec, then get a frightened look on your face and scream Oh my God! Theyve found me! and bolt.

2. Laugh uncontrollably for about 3 minutes & then suddenly stop and look suspiciously at everyone who looks at you.

3. When your computer is turned off, complain to the monitor on duty that you cant get the darn thing to work. After he/shes turned it on, wait 5 minutes, turn it off again, & repeat the process for a good half hour.

4. Type frantically, often stopping to look at the person next to you evilly.

5. Before anyone else is in the lab, connect each computer to different screen than the one its set up with.

6. Write a program that plays the Smurfs theme song and play it at the highest volume possible over & over again.

7. Work normally for a while. Suddenly look amazingly startled by something on the screen and crawl underneath the desk.

8. Ask the person next to you if they know how to tap into top-secret Pentagon files.

9. Use Interactive Send to make passes at people you dont know.

10. Make a small ritual sacrifice to the computer before you turn it on.

11. Bring a chainsaw, but dont use it. If anyone asks why you have it, say Just in case… mysteriously.

12. Type on VAX for a while. Suddenly start cursing for 3 minutes at everything bad about your life. Then stop and continue typing.

13. Enter the lab, undress, and start staring at other people as if theyre crazy while typing.

14. Light candles around your terminal before starting.

15. Ask around for a spare disk. Offer $2. Keep asking until someone agrees. Then, pull a disk out of your fly and say, Oops, I forgot.

16. Every time you press Return and there is processing time required, pray Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease, and scream YES! when it finishes.

17. DISK FIGHT!!!

18. Start making out with the person at the terminal next to you (It helps if you know them, but this is also a great way to make new friends).

19. Put a straw in your mouth and put your hands in your pockets. Type by hitting the keys with the straw.

20. If youre sitting in a swivel chair, spin around singing The Lion Sleeps Tonight whenever there is processing time required.

21. Draw a picture of a woman (or man) on a piece of paper, tape it to your monitor. Try to seduce it. Act like it hates you and then complain loudly that women (men) are worthless.

22. Try to stick a Nintendo cartridge into the 3 1/2 disc drive, when it doesnt work, get the supervisor.

23. When you are on an IBM, and when you turn it on, ask loudly where the smiling Apple face is when you turn on one of those.

24. Print out the complete works of Shakespeare, then when its all done (two days later) say that all you wanted was one line.

25. Sit and stare at the screen, biting your nails noisely. After doing this for a while, spit them out at the feet of the person next to you.

26. Stare at the screen, grind your teeth, stop, look at the person next to you. Grind some more. Repeat procedure, making sure you never provoke the person enough to let them blow up, as this releases tension, and it is far more effective to let them linger.

27. If you have long hair, take a typing break, look for split ends, cut them and deposit them on your neighbors keyboard as you leave.

28. Put a large, gold-framed portrait of the British Royal Family on your desk and loudly proclaim that it inspires you.

29. Come to the lab wearing several layers of socks. Remove shoes and place them on top of the monitor. Remove socks layer by layer and drape them around the monitor. Exclaim sudden haiku about the aesthetic beauty of cotton on plastic.

30. Take the keyboard and sit under the computer. Type up your paper like this. Then go to the lab supervisor and complain about the bad working conditions.

31. Laugh hysterically, shout You will all perish in flames!!! and continue working.

32. Bring some dry ice & make it look like your computer is smoking.

33. Assign a musical note to every key (ie. the Delete key is A Flat, the B key is F sharp, etc.). Whenever you hit a key, hum its note loudly. Write an entire paper this way.

34. Attempt to eat your computers mouse.

35. Borrow someone elses keyboard by reaching over, saying Excuse me, mind if I borrow this for a sec?, unplugging the keyboard & taking it.

36. Bring in a bunch of magnets and have fun.

37. When doing calculations, pull out an abacus and say that sometimes the old ways are best.

38. Play Pong for hours on the most powerful computer in the lab.

39. Make a loud noise of hitting the same key over and over again until you see that your neighbor is noticing (You can hit the space bar so your fill isnt affected). Then look at your neighbors keyboard. Hit his/her delete key several times, erasing an entire word. While you do this, ask: Does *your* delete key work? Shake your head, and resume hitting the space bar on your keyboard. Keep doing this until youve deleted about a page of your neighbors document. Then, suddenly exclaim: Well, whaddya know? Ive been hitting the space bar this whole time. No wonder it wasnt deleting! Ha! Print out your document and leave.

40. Remove your disk from the drive and hide it. Go to the lab monitor and complain that your computer ate your disk. (For special effects, put some Elmers Glue on or around the disk drive. Claim that the computer is drooling.)

41. Stare at the screen of the person next to you, look really puzzled, burst out laughing, and say You did that? loudly. Keep laughing, grab your stuff and leave, howling as you go.

42. Point at the screen. Chant in a made up language while making elaborate hand gestures for a minute or two. Press return or the mouse, then leap back and yell COVEEEEERRRRRR! peek up from under the table, walk back to the computer and say. Oh, good. It worked this time, and calmly start to type again.

43. Keep looking at invisible bugs and trying to swat them.

44. See whos online. Send a total stranger a talk request. Talk to them like youve known them all your lives. Hangup before they get a chance to figure out youre a total stranger.

45. Bring a small tape player with a tape of really absurd sound effects. Pretend its the computer and look really lost.

46. Pull out a pencil. Start writing on the screen. Complain that the lead doesnt work.

47. Come into the computer lab wearing several endangered species of flowers in your hair. Smile incessantly. Type a sentence, then laugh happily, exclaim Youre such a marvel!!, and kiss the screen. Repeat this after every sentence. As your ecstasy mounts, also hug the keyboard. Finally, hug your neighbor, then the computer assistant, and walk out.

48. Run into the computer lab, shout Armageddon is here!!!!!, then calmly sit down and begin to type.

49. Quietly walk into the computer lab with a Black and Decker chainsaw, rev that baby up, and then walk up to the nearest person and say, Give me that computer or youll be feeding my pet crocodile for the next week.

50. Two words: Tesla Coil.

How many men do you need to screw on a light bulp?
One. Theyll screw anything.

How many Finns does it take to change a light bulp?
Unknown, becouse when Finns notice that the light bulp is made of glass and
that it has threads they spend the entire night trying to fix it!

How many software pirates does it take to change a light bulp?
3, first one gets as new a light bulp as possible, the second changes it and
the third one codes an intro that says what they just achieved.

How many members of U2 does it take to change a light bulp?
One. Bono holds up the light bulp, and the universe revolves around his ass.

How many Lead trumpet players does it take to change a light bulp?
50 to do it and the others to stand around and say, I could do that
better.

How many drummers does it take to change a light bulp?
They have a machine that does that now.

How many Filipinoes does it take to screw in a light bulb?
We dont know. The new bulb keeps getting shot at the airport.

How many Englishmen does it take to change a light bulb?
What do you mean change it? Its a perfectly good bloody bulb! We have had
it for a thousand years and it has worked just fine.

How many Germans does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Ve are asking ze qvestions here!
Two, one to give the order that the bulb be changed and one to screw it in.
None. They assign the task to a gastarbeiter.

How many Ukrainians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
They dont need to, they glow in the dark.

How many Serbs does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Two – one to shoot the old bulb out and one to screw the new one in.

How many Microsoft programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
They dont bother. They just change the standard to darkness. (Continuation:
Of course, the darkness isnt yet complete in version 1.0, but Microsoft
promises that in the next release it will be.)

How many Apple employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Seven. One to screw it in and six to design the t-shirts.

How many Apple programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but why bother? Your light socket will just be obsolete in six
months anyway.

How many Apple and IBM nuts does it take to change a light bulb
An infinite number: nothing useful gets done while theyre arguing. Finally
a disgusted generic computer user (who will use any type that is in front of
him) gets up and changes the bulb, elbowing the participants aside. The size of
the crowd arguing seems to be a function of time, although whether or not the
function is exponential is not known.

How many Windows users does it take to change a light bulb?
One, but she/hell swear up and down that it was just as easy for him
as it would be for a Macintosh user.

How many Macintosh engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None – it has to be done by a local authorized dealer.

How many Mac owners does it take to screw in a light bulb?

None – theres no documentation available, so you have to wait until a
third-party supplier comes out with a solution. Did you try rebooting with
extensions off?
Just one, but the new light bulbs arent compatible with the old sockets, so
he has to buy a complete upgrade or a new light.
Two: One to ask the socket to eject the old bulb, and one to insert the new
one.
Three: One to change the bulb, one to copyright the method for changing the
bulb, and one to call in the lawyers on anyone who infringes on the look and
feel of the bulb changing method.
Mac users dont screw, they just click the genital icon.

How many Newtons does it take to change a light bulb?
Foux! There to eat lemons, axe gravy soup. Farm.

How many Newton users does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Only one, tharks to the extnq-producilve handwritling processcr.

Perhaps the Most Truthful: on Microsoft marketing:
There wont be anything we wont say to people to try and convince
them that our way is the way to go.

Not on his mind while developing Win9X..circa 1981…
640K ought to be enough for anybody.

On the solid code base of Win9X… thanks WPW!
If you cant make it good, at least make it look good.

from OS/2 Programmers Guide (forward by Bill Gates):
I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system,
and possibly program, of all time. As the successor to DOS, which has
over 10,000,000 systems in use, it creates incredible opportunities for
everyone involved with PCs.

Bill Gates, Free Market and the LA Times Thanks GC!
There are people who dont like capitalism, and people who dont like
PCs. But theres no-one who likes the PC who doesnt like Microsoft

From the back of an old Digitalk Smalltalk/V PM manual, 1990:
This is the right way to develop applications for OS/2 PM. OS/2 PM
is a tremendously rich environment, which makes it inherently complex.
Smalltalk/V PM removes that complexity and lets you concentrate on
writing great programs. Smalltalk/V PM is the kind of tool that will
make OS/2 the successor to MS/DOS.

from OS/2 Notebook, Microsoft Press, (c) 1990–an excerpt from an
interview with Bill Gates and Jim Cannavino, p. 614:
Developer: Does the announcement [of the OS/2 joint development agreement
between IBM and Microsoft] mean that Microsoft is curtailing any plans
for future development of Windows?
Gates: Microsoft has not changed any of its plans for Windows. It is
obvious that we will not include things like threads and preemptive
multitasking in Windows. By the time we added that, you would have OS/2.

Theres a reason they threw it away…
from Programmers at Work by Microsoft Press, interview with Bill
(found on comp.os.os2.advocacy),
Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be
a programmer?

Gates: No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study
great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the
garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of
their operating system.

Only the finest Microsoft marketing! (submitted by BarryB):
If you dont know what you need Windows NT for, you dont need it.

On the Box of Windows 2.11 for 286 (submitted by GLDM)
New interface closely resembles Presentation Manager, preparing you for
the wonders of OS/2!

On code stability, from Focus Magazine (submitted by Benedikt Heinen
Microsoft programs are generally bug-free. If you visit the Microsoft
hotline, youll literally have to wait weeks if not months until someone
calls in with a bug in one of our programs. 99.99% of calls turn out to
be user mistakes.
[…]
I know not a single less irrelevant reason for an update than bugfixes.
The reasons for updates are to present more new features.

Unconfirmed quotes:

Microsofts GUI innovations… 1983 (thanks E.R.)
Imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work
another company could come along and copy your work and market it under
its own name…without legal restraints to such copying, companies like
Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art.

Even more 1984 predictions (thanks Scott Renyen)
The next generation of interesting software will be made on a Macintosh,
not an IBM PC.

Included subliminal Impeach Janet Reno messages in start-up screen.
New Internet Explorer feature: whenever you visit a Web site ending in .gov, a message first appears reminding you that Microsoft is not a monopoly.
Source code no longer ones and zeros – try 666s and zeros. Windows start-up theme, played backward, says, Heres to my sweet Satan.
Comes with check for $50 that, if cashed, puts your name on an Internet petition telling the DOJ to buzz off *and* changes your long distance carrier to AT&T.
New desktop icon – click once, and $1 will go directly from your checking account into the Microsoft Legal Defense Fund.
Added new template to preinstalled version of Word: Letter to the editor expressing delight with Microsoft products.
Freebie computer-controlled Barney doll has been reprogrammed to say, Big government is sca-a-ary. Janet tried to hurt me.
TV function scrambles C-Span during antitrust hearings.
Desktop display with countdown tracking number of copies of Windows 98 that must yet be bought to prevent worldwide economic collapse!
Last-minute name change: was Windows 98, now Windows: Assimilate.