Encyclopedia of Humor

386: No, 486: Oops, Pentium: The only chip to consider if you’re thinking of buying a PC. Until Intel ramps up the 686.

640K: The salary the average Wall Street PC analyst pulls in each year.

Algorithm: A catchy 1930 song by George and Ira Gershwin.

Availability: Date when a dozen copies of the beta version will be hurriedly shrink-wrapped for the benefit of the press and the investment community.

Backup: The chore you were really, honestly, going to do the very next thing before you switched drive letters and accidentally copied older, out-of-date versions of you files over all your newer ones at 3 a.m.

Buffer: The only other job – involving a chamois at the car wash – for which most computer store salespeople are qualified.

Bundled software: Free applications like home dentistry packages and Esperanto spelling dictionaries that are thrown in with cheap clones so you think you’re getting real value for your money.

CD-ROM: A $30 dollar mechanism in a $300 cabinet that accesses vast quantities of valuable information too slowly to use.

Copy protection: A sly technique employed by hardware vendors to combat software piracy by continually changing the size and compatibility of disk drives (from 160K to 320K to 360K to 1.2MB to 720K to 1.44MB to 2.88MB, etc.).

CP/M: An antiquated operation system from the early days of computing, based on inscrutable prompts like A>, terse commands, and absurdly backward conventions, such as 11-character limits on filenames. Contrasted with today’s modern versions of DOS.

Database, flat-file: A program selling for under $500 that most people use to keep lists of names and addresses, etc.

Database, relational/programmable: A program selling for over $500 that most people use to keep lists of names and addresses, etc.

Debugging: The process of uncovering glitches by packaging prerelease software as finished products, then waiting for irate customers to report problems.

Downward compatibility: You really didn’t have to spend the money for the upgraded version, since all you use anyway is the old set of features.

End User: One born every minute.

Entry level: Only slightly above most users’ heads.

Expanded memory: RAM that is, uh, well, um, different from extended memory.

Expansion slot: The computer didn’t come with everything you needed.

Extended memory: RAM that is, uh, well, um, different from expanded memory.

FAX: Originally a last resort for procrastinators who missed the final Federal Express pickup; these days, an expensive way to order lunch from the pizza place around the corner.

Firmware: Software with permanent bugs hardwired into it.

Icon: One picture is worth a thousand lawsuits. Or, as Shakespeare might have put it, “He who steals my trash better have a large purse.

Installation routine: A process employed by many applications to overwrite and thereby trash the user’s existing and painstakingly created AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files

Interface, character-based: A way of presenting information to the user that’s every bit as good as a user interface except in the areas of readability, ease of use, intuitiveness, and productivity.

Interface, graphic user (GUI): An increasingly popular way of presenting information to the user, originally designed by Xerox PARC and now being adopted by dozens of competitors; otherwise known as the Trial Attorney Full Employment Act.

Laptop: A dinky keyboard wedded to a lousy LCD screen, all with bad battery life.

Live links: A clever system that lets you unknowingly corrupt data in lots of separate files at the same time.

Low-bandwidth: The process of talking to a corporate press relations official. (Question: How many IBM PR types does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: We’ll have to get back to you on that.)

Nanosecond: The time it takes after your warranty expires for your hard disk to start making a sound like a monkey wrench in a blender.

NiCad battery: A cell that powers a laptop long enough to let you do three solid hours of work, then dies before you’re ready to save any of it to disk.

Open system: Made up of parts from different manufacturers so that, when you crash, each vendor can blame the others.

Optional: It should have come free, but someone in the marketing department ran 1-2-3 and figured they’d double their profits this way.

Parity: A ninth memory bit that one time in nine will crash an otherwise perfectly functioning system when it detects an error in itself.

Partition: A wall you have to build around a noisy dot matrix printer that makes only slightly less noise than a tree chipper.

Point-and-shoot: You mean you’d rather click on a menu choice than have to type things like DEVICE=DOSUTSDRIVER.SYS /D:0 /T:80 /S:15 /H:2 /F:1 ?

Power Surge: What an MIS director feels when he denies you access to your own database.

Power user: Someone who’s read the manual all the way through once.

Productivity: Printing out 30 different versions of your document before getting the spacing correct.

Real-time clock: A 50-dollar option based on a five-cent chip.

SAA: Silly And Awkward.

Shell: A clumsy program that forces users to stumble through ten menus to get anything done instead of typing a simple three-character command.

Shock-mounted: Make sure you’re sitting down when you ask the price.

Spreadsheet: Sophisticated software that can be used as a database, rudimentary word processor, graphing program, and, in a pinch, a ledger.

Stack: The place in the corner of the room where you pile unopened software manuals.

Standard: Manufactured by the company that does the flashiest advertising.

Support: Fast, simple, courteous, friendly, accurate help available to any user who happens to work for any company that bought 1,000 copies of the product.

Throughput: What you feel like doing with your foot and your computer screen after you see the message “General Failure Error Reading Drive C:”.

Toll-free hotline: An AT&T busy-signal test number.

Toner cartridge: A device to refill laser printers; invented by the Association of American Dry Cleaners.

Torture test: Everyone – from the FedEx guy to the clerk who opened the box to the trainee who executed the speed test – accidentally dropped it.

Tutorial: A program that forces you to sit through lessons on every last obscure and little-used feature of an application while ignoring overall fundamental tricks that would make you far more productive.

Unix, year of: See Calendar, perpetual.

Value-added: A lot more expensive.

Virus: Commonly, the belief of incompetent users that some mysterious external force is to blame for their mistakes at the keyboard.

Workstation: Any PC that sells for more than $10,000.

XT: All the computer that most users who just type letters and run typical spreadsheets will ever need, even though a 386 machine will reformat their text a whole tenth of a second faster.

Here is a story about one of the classic computer hacks.

Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support staff at Motorola discovered a relatively simple way to crack system security on the Xerox CP-V timesharing system. Through a simple programming strategy, it was possible for a user program to trick the system into running a portion of the program in `master mode’ (supervisor state), in which memory protection does not apply. The program could then poke a large value into its `privilege level’ byte (normally write-protected) and could then proceed to bypass all levels of security within the file-management system, patch the system monitor, and do numerous other interesting things. In short, the barn door was wide open.

Motorola quite properly reported this problem to Xerox via an official `level 1 SIDR’ (a bug report with an intended urgency of `needs to be fixed yesterday’). Because the text of each SIDR was entered into a database that could be viewed by quite a number of people, Motorola followed the approved procedure: they simply reported the problem as `Security SIDR’, and attached all of the necessary documentation, ways-to-reproduce, etc.

The CP-V people at Xerox sat on their thumbs; they either didn’t realize the severity of the problem, or didn’t assign the necessary operating-system-staff resources to develop and distribute an official patch.

Months passed. The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox field-support rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take direct action, to demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily the system could be cracked and just how thoroughly the security safeguards could be subverted.

They dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a thoroughly devilish set of patches. These patches were then incorporated into a pair of programs called `Robin Hood’ and `Friar Tuck’. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as `ghost jobs’ (daemons, in UNIX terminology); they would use the existing loophole to subvert system security, install the necessary patches, and then keep an eye on one another’s statuses in order to keep the system operator (in effect, the superuser) from aborting them.

One fine day, the system operator on the main CP-V software development system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of unusual phenomena. These included the following:

* Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the middle of a job. * Disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that they would attempt to walk across the floor. * The card-punch output device would occasionally start up of itself and punch a lace card. These would usually jam in the punch. * The console would print snide and insulting messages from Robin Hood to Friar Tuck, or vice versa. * The Xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could be instructed to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A (unless a card was unreadable, in which case the bad card was placed into stacker B). One of the patches installed by the ghosts added some code to the card-reader driver… after reading a card, it would flip over to the opposite stacker. As a result, card decks would divide themselves in half when they were read, leaving the operator to re collate them manually.

Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers. They found the bandit ghost jobs running, and X’ed them… and were once again surprised. When Robin Hood was X’ed, the following sequence of events took place:

!X id1

id1: Friar Tuck… I am under attack! Pray save me! id1: Off (aborted)

id2: Fear not, friend Robin! I shall rout the Sheriff of Nottingham’s men!

id1: Thank you, my good fellow!

Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been killed, and would start a new copy of the recently slain program within a few milliseconds. The only way to kill both ghosts was to kill them simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately crash the system.

Finally, the system programmers did the latter — only to find that the bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted! It turned out that these two programs had patched the boot-time OS image (the kernel file, in UNIX terms) and had added themselves to the list of programs that were to be started at boot time.

The Robin Hood and Friar Tuck ghosts were finally eradicated when the system staff rebooted the system from a clean boot-tape and reinstalled the monitor. Not long thereafter, Xerox released a patch for this problem.

It is alleged that Xerox filed a complaint with Motorola’s management about the merry-prankster actions of the two employees in question. It is not recorded that any serious disciplinary action was taken against either of them.

I’ve been working on a project at work to ensure all our end users know how to back up data in preparation for company wide computer upgrades. I’m tempted to hand this out to some of our users.

1. Never leave diskettes in the disk drive, as data can leak out of the disk and corrode the inner mechanics of the drive. Diskettes should be rolled up and stored in pencil holders.

2. Diskettes should be cleaned and waxed once a week. Microscopic metal particles can be removed by waving a powerful magnet over the surface of the disk. Any stubborn metallic shavings can be removed with scouring powder and soap. When waxing diskettes, make sure application is even. This will allow the diskettes to spin faster, resulting in better access time.

3. Do not fold diskettes unless they do not fit in the drive. “Big” diskettes may be folded and used in “little” disk drives.

4. Never insert a disk into the drive upside down. The data can fall off the surface of the disk and jam the intricate mechanics of the drive.

5. Diskettes cannot be backed up by running them through the Xerox machine. If your data needs to be backed up, simply insert two diskettes together into the drive whenever you update a document; the data will be recorded on both diskettes.

6. Diskettes should not be inserted into or removed from the drive while the red light is flashing. Doing so could result in smeared or possibly unreadable text. Occasionally the red light continues to flash in what is known as a “hung” or “hooked” state. If your system is “hooking” you, you will probably need to insert several dollars before being allowed to access the disk drive.

7. If your diskette is full and you need more storage space, remove the disk from the drive and shake vigorously for two minutes. This will pack the data (“data compression”) enough to allow for more storage. Be sure to cover all the openings with scotch tape to prevent loss of data.

In a surprise announcement today, Microsoft President Steve Ballmer revealed that the Redmond-based company will allow computer resellers and end-users to customize the appearance of the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), the screen that displays when the Windows operating system crashes.

The move comes as the result of numerous focus groups and customer surveys done by Microsoft. Thousands of Microsoft customers were asked, “What do you spend the most time doing on your computer?”

A surprising number of respondents said, “Staring at a Blue Screen of Death.” At 54 percent, it was the top answer, beating the second place answer “Downloading XXXScans” by an easy 12 points.

“We immediately recognized this as a great opportunity for ourselves, our channel partners, and especially our customers,” explained the excited Ballmer to a room full of reporters.

Immense video displays were used to show images of the new customizable BSOD screen side-by-side with the older static version. Users can select from a collection of “BSOD Themes,” allowing them to instead have a Mauve Screen of Death or even a Paisley Screen of Death. Graphics and multimedia content can now be incorporated into the screen, making the BSOD the perfect conduit for delivering product information and entertainment to Windows users.

The BSOD is by far the most recognized feature of the Windows operating system, and as a result, Microsoft has historically insisted on total control over its look and feel. This recent departure from that policy reflects Microsoft’s recognition of the Windows desktop itself as the “ultimate information portal.” By default, the new BSOD will be configured to show a random selection of Microsoft product information whenever the system crashes. Microsoft channel partners can negotiate with Microsoft for the right to customize the BSOD on systems they ship.

Major computer resellers such as Compaq, Gateway, and Dell are already lining up for premier placement on the new and improved BSOD. Ballmer concluded by getting a dig in against the Open Source community. “This just goes to show that Microsoft continues to innovate at a much faster pace than open source. I have yet to see any evidence that Linux even has a BSOD, let alone a customizable one.”

There was an engineer, manager and programmer driving down a steep mountain road.

The brakes failed and the car careened down the road out of control.

Half way down the driver managed to stop the car by running it against the embankment narrowing avoiding going over a cliff.

They all got out, shaken by their narrow escape from death, but otherwise unharmed.

The manager said “To fix this problem we need to organize a committee, have meetings, and through a process of continuous improvement, develop a solution.”

The engineer said “No that would take too long, and besides that method never worked before. I have my trusty pen knife here and will take apart the brake system, isolate the problem and correct it.”

The programmer said “I think you’re both wrong! I think we should all push the car back up the hill and see if it happens again.”