Computer Jokes

For many years molecular biologists have been mystified by the fact that very little of an organism's DNA seems to serve any useful function. I have solved the mystery. The reason why only 30% of human DNA performs any useful function is that the rest of it is comments. Once we decode a typical human genome, we see that the contents begin as follows: === /* HUMAN_DNA.H * * Human Genome * Version 2.1 * * (C) God */ /* Revision history: * * 0000-00-01 00:00 1.0 Adam. * 0000-00-02 10:00 1.1 Eve. * 0000-00-03 02:11 1.2 Added penis code to male version. A bit messy -- * will require a rewrite later on to make it neater. * 0017-03-12 03:14 1.3 Added extra sex drive to male.h; took code from * elephant-dna.c * 0145-10-03 16:33 1.4 Removed tail. * 1115-00-31 17:20 1.5 Shortened forearms, expanded brain case. * 2091-08-20 13:56 1.6 Opposable thumbs added to hand() routine. * 2501-04-09 14:04 1.7 Minor cosmetic improvements -- skin colour made * darker to match my own image. * 2909-07-12 02:21 1.8 Dentition inadequate; added extra 'wisdom' teeth. * Must remember to make mouth bigger to compensate. * 4501-12-31 14:18 1.9 Increase average height. * 5533-02-12 17:09 2.0 Added gay option, triggered by high population * density, to try and slow the overpopulation problem. * 6004-11-04 16:11 2.1 Made forefinger narrower to fit hole in centre of * CD. */ /* Standard definitions */ #define SEX male #define HEIGHT 1.84 #define MASS 68 #define RACE caucasian /* Include inherited traits from parent DNA files. * * Files must be pre-processed with MENDEL program to provide proper * inheritance features. */ #include "mother.h" #include "father.h" #infndef FATHER #warn("Father unknown -- guessing\n") #include "bastard.h" #endif /* Set up sex-specific functions and variables */ #include /* Kludged code -- I'll re-design this lot and re-write it as a proper * library sometime soon. */ struct genitals { #ifdef MALE Penis *jt; #endif /* G_spot *g; Removed for debugging purposes */ #ifdef FEMALE Vagina *p; #endif } /* Initialization bootstrap routine -- called before DNA duplication. * Allocates buffers and sets up protein file pointers */ DNA *zygote_initialize(Sperm *, Ovum *); /* MAIN INITIALIZATION CODE * * Returns structures containing pre-processed phenotypes for the organism * to display at birth. * * Will be improved later to make output less ugly. */ Characteristic *lookup_phenotype(Identifier *i); === ...and so on. [ Note that God uses three-space tabs ]

You Decide

__________ | ______ | ________ | | | | | ______ | 'But that isn't a fair | | | | || || comparison. People | |______| | ||______|| like the Etch-A-Sketch.' | | | o o | | _ _ _ _ _| |________| (|__________|\ | ________)_ Roger Earl [^] | | roger_earl@outbound.wimsey.bc.ca [_] |__________|

After admiring the above signature I thought I'd post a comparison, similar to the other great computer wars.

Etch-A-Sketch Mac Classic

No. of Colours 2 2 Resolution ~2000*~2000 512 * 342 No. of buttons 2 1 Preemptive Multitasking Yes No Hardware line draw Yes No Price < $20 ~ $1000 Power Consumption No Yes Laptop Yes No Slow Operating System No Yes Non Volatile Memory Yes No Choice of Coloured box Yes No Robust design (shakeable) Yes No

After considering the above options, I decided to buy the Etch-A-Sketch. For all you die-hard Amiga fanatics out there rumour has it that the Etch-A-Sketch-Emulator is coming out for the Amiga, and will in fact be faster than the true E-A-S.

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 6800 in the main drive (he missed the 5100 bus that morning ), when he noticed an elegant piece of hardware escorting her 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 delightfull, 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 inquired "How are you Honey Well?." "Yes I am well," she responded, batting her optical fibres 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 will cut out a byte to eat, and maybe we could get an offset later on."

Mini ran a priority process for 2.6 milliseconds then transmitted OK. "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 a top of form feed of fiche and chips and a bucket of bawdots. Mini was in conversational mode and expanded on ambiguous arguments while Micro gave occasional acknowlegments, 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 subroutine?" 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 software. "Let's get Basic, you RAM," she said. Micro was loaded by this stage, but his hardware polling module had a processor of it's own and 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 he went down on the DEC and opened her device files to reveal her data set ready. He accessed his fully packed root device and was about to start pushing her CPU stack, when she attempted an escape sequence ....

"No, No" she cried, "You are 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 will 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 voltage spike into his main supply, whereupon he fell over with a head crash and went to sleep.

"Computers," She thought as she compiled herself, "All they ever think of is HEX."

This memo is to announce the development of a new firm-wide software system. We are currently building a data center that will contain all firm data that is Year 2000 compliant. The program is referred to as the "Millennia Year Application Software System" (MYASS). Next Monday at 9:00 there will be a meeting in which I will show MYASS to everyone. We will continue to hold demonstrations throughout the month so that all employees will have an opportunity to get a good look at MYASS. As for the status of the implementation of the program, I have not addressed the networking aspects so currently only one person at a time can use MYASS. This restriction will be removed after MYASS expands. Several people are using the program already and have come to depend on it. Just this morning I walked into a subordinate's office and was not surprised to find that he had his nose buried in MYASS. I've noticed that some of the less technical personnel are somewhat afraid of MYASS. Just last week, when asked to enter some information into the program, I had a secretary say to me "I'm a little nervous, I've never put anything in MYASS before." I volunteered to help her through her first time and when we were through she admitted that it was relatively painless and she was actually looking forward to doing it again. She went so far as to say that after using SAP and Oracle, she was ready to kiss MYASS. I know there are concerns over the virus that was found in MYASS upon initial installation, but I am pleased to say the virus has been eliminated and we were able to save MYASS. In the future, however, protection will be required prior to entering MYASS. We planned this database to encompass all information associated with the business. So as you begin using the program, feel free to put anything you want into MYASS. As MYASS grows larger, we envision a time when it will be commonplace to walk by an office and see a manager hand a paper to an employee and say "Here, stick this in MYASS". This program has already demonstrated great benefit to the company during recent OSHA and EPA audits. After requesting certain historical data the agency representatives were amazed at how quickly we provided the information. When asked how the numbers could be retrieved so rapidly our Environmental Manager proudly stated "Simple, I just pulled them out of MYASS."