Encyclopedia of Humor

In the beginning, God created the bit. And the bit was a zero; nothing.

On the first day, He toggled the 0 to 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 the the “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 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 UNIX into the Universe, and it hasn’t worked right since.

A golf club walks into a local bar and asks the barman for a pint of beer.

The barman refuses to serve him. “Why not,” asks the golf club.

“You’ll be driving later,” replies the bartender

Desperately seeking technical support!

I’m currently running the latest version of Girlfriend 5.0 and having some problems. I’ve been running the same version of DrinkingBuddies 1.0 for years as my primary application, and all the Girlfriend releases have always conflicted with it. I hear that DrinkingBuddies won’t crash if you minimize Girlfriend with the sound off, but since I can’t find the switch to turn it off, I just run them separately and it works OK.

Girlfriend also seems to have a problem coexisting with Golfware, often trying to abort my Golf program with some sort of timing incompatibility. I probably should have stayed with Girlfriend 1.0, but I thought I might see better performance with Girlfriend 2.0.

After months of conflicts, I consulted a friend who has experience with Girlfriend 2.0. He said I probably didn’t have enough cache to run Girlfriend 2.0 and eventually it would require a Token Ring upgrade to run properly. He was right. As soon as I purged my cache, Girlfriend 2.0 uninstalled itself.

Shortly after that, I installed a Girlfriend 3.0 beta. All the bugs were supposed to be gone, but the first time I used it, it gave me a virus. After a hard drive clean up and thorough virus scan I very cautiously upgraded to Girlfriend 4.0. This time using a SCSI probe and virus protection. It worked OK for a while until I discovered Girlfriend 1.0 wasn’t completely uninstalled!

I tried to run Girlfriend 1.0 again with Girlfriend 4.0 still installed, but Girlfriend 4.0 has an unadvertised feature that automatically senses the presence of Girlfriend 1.0 and communicates with it in some way, resulting in the immediate removal of both versions!

The version I have now works pretty well, but, like all versions, there are still some problems. The Girlfriend package is written in some obscure language that I can’t understand, much less reprogram. And I’ve never liked how Girlfriend is totally ‘object-oriented.’

A year ago, a friend upgraded his version to GirlfriendPlus 1.0, which is a Terminate-and-Stay resident version. He discovered GirlfriendPlus 1.0 expires within a year if you don’t upgrade to Fiance9e 1.0. So he did. But soon after that, you have to upgrade to Wife 1.0, which he describes as a ‘huge resource hog.’ It has taken up all his space, so he can’t load anything else. One of the primary reasons that he upgraded to Wife is because it came bundled with FreeSex 1.0. Well, it turns out that the resource allocation module of Wife 1.0 sometimes prohibits access to FreeSex (particularly the new Plug and Play items he wanted to try). On top of that, Wife 1.0 must be running on a well warmed-up system before he can do anything. And, although he did not ask for it, Wife 1.0 came with MotherInLaw 1.0, which has an automatic popup feature he can’t turn off.

I told him to install Mistress 1.0, but he said that he heard that if you try to run it without first uninstalling Wife, that Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before uninstalling itself. Then Mistress 1.0 won’t install anyway, due to insufficient resources. If anybody out there is able to offer technical advice…

How Does a (______) Chicken Cross the Road?

NT Chicken: Will cross the road in June. No, August. September for sure.

OS/2 Chicken: It crossed the road in style years ago, but it was so quiet that nobody noticed.

Win 95 Chicken: You see different colored feathers while it crosses, but cook it and it still tastes like … chicken.

Microsoft Chicken (TM): It’s already on both sides of the road. And it just bought the road.

OOP Chicken: It doesn’t need to cross the road, it just sends a message.

Assembler Chicken: First it builds the road …

C Chicken: It crosses the road without looking both ways.

C++ Chicken: The chicken wouldn’t have to cross the road, you’d simply refer to him on the other side.

VB Chicken: USHighways!TheRoad.cross (aChicken)

Delphi Chicken: The chicken is dragged across the road and dropped on the other side.

Java Chicken: If your road needs to be crossed by a chicken, the server will download one to the other side. (Of course, those are chicklets)

Web Chicken: Jumps out onto the road, turns right, and just keeps on running.

Gopher Chicken: Tried to run, but got flattened by the Web chicken.

Newton Chicken: Can’t cluck, can’t fly, and can’t lay eggs, but you can carry it across the road in your pocket !

Cray Chicken: Crosses faster than any other chicken, but if you don’t dip it in liquid nitrogen first, it arrives on the other side fully cooked.

Quantum Logic Chicken: The chicken is distributed probabalistically on all sides of the road until you observe it on the side of your course.

Lotus Chicken: Don’t you *dare* try to cross the road the same way we do!

Mac Chicken: No reasonable chicken owner would want a chicken to cross the road, so there’s no way to tell it to.

And LO! The Lord of the OS did come down among His sheep and He did sayeth, Thou Shalt Pay Bill Gates, and he will deleverith unto you my product.

I am Win95, your GUI. Thou shalt not have false GUI’s on machines before me.

And the Lord said, “16 bit applications are evil! I am sorry I ever created them. I shall destroy them all and start over. Thou shalt all buy new computers.”

And the prophet Intel came forward and said, “But Lord, what about backwards compatibility? What about the tribes of 8086 and 80286 and 80386?” And Lo! the Lord became angry and said, “Compatibility is irrelevant. You will be assimilated.”

And the consumers gathered around Bill Gates and the tower of Microsoft, and they asked, “Prophet, how much must we spend on salvation? Seven times our investment?” And Bill Gates turned to the crowd and he said unto them, “Nay, consumers, you must not spend seven times your investment, but rather seventy times seven times your investment. Only then shall you be saved.”

And the consumers did as they were told. But the product did not work, and they grew angry, and they cried out to the Lord, “Lord, we have done as you asked, but the product does not work! Our machines, they run slow! Our applications, they do not run.” And the Lord said unto them, “I tell you this, it is easier for Alice Cooper to enter the gates of heaven than for a Pentium to run Windows95.”

And as the masses came forward, I saw inscribed upon their heads W95, the Number of the Bill.

And the Prophet Bill, for that is who it must have been, he raised his right hand, and broke the first seal, saying, “Behold, the seal of Microsoft. By the breaking of this seal you are bound unto whatever the contract within may say.” And as the seal was broken, all the great empires around the world were set upon with famine and floods and swarms of bugs like never seen before and great anguish befell them all. And lo, the Prophet Bill held up the scroll and said, “Behold, the second seal! I shall not break it today, but rather I shalt break it soon, like perhaps next week, or maybe the week thereafter. Thou shalt wait expectantly for its breaking, shalt not produce any other work until that time shall come.”