ID: 13353
Tech
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on the old long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts. So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by
Imperial Rome for the benefit of their Legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots.
Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches
derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and Bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's behind came up with it, you
may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two warhorses.
ID: 2540
Tech
NOTE: This is a true story of a real call to a computor company tech support.
One day a guy calls tech support. this is how it went...
Cust: Hello?
TS: Hello
Cust: Yeah, my cup holder broke and my computor is still under warranty, so I would like to get it replaced.
TS: Ummm cup holder?
Cust: yeah cup holder...
TS: Ummm did you get it with a promotional offer?
Cust: No
TS: Umm are you sure you got the right company?
Cust: Yeah
TS: Ummm... im sorry if i sound confused, because i am.
Cust: Well its square, and its on the front of the computor, and it comes out when you press a button...
At this point the Tech support guy had to put the guy on hold, so he could finish laughing...
The guy had broken his CD-rom drive, thinking it was a cup holder.
ID: 13346
Tech
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." - Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." - The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
"But what ... is it good for?" - Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" - Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.
ID: 6882
Tech
(Linux is a server far superior to windows. It's logo is Tux the digital penguin.)
1. Your favorite movie was Kill Bill.
2. Your favorite animal is a penguin.
3. You think micro and soft describe Bill Gates.
4. You would like to "server" Gates head.
5. Your desktop picture is of tux burning the windows flag.
6. Your motto is "W1ND0W$ 1$ 7H3 root 0F @LL 3V1L"
7. You can read the above statment.
8. You think XBOX was Microsoft's first success.
9. You would rather have a computer from Hasbro than Microsoft.
10. Your computer can play solitaire.
For you Windows users #6 means "Windows is the root of all evil".
ID: 16129
Tech
Focus Magazine Interview with Bill Gates
Microsoft Code Has No Bugs (that Microsoft cares about)
---------------------------------------------------------
In an interview for German weekly magazine Focus (nr.43, October 23, 1995, pages 206-212), Microsoft`s Mr. Bill Gates has made some tements about software quality of MS products. After lengthy inquiries about how PCs should and could be used (including some angry comments on some questions which Mr. Gates evidently did not like), the interviewer comes to storage requirements of MS products; it ends with the following dispute:
---------------------------------------------------------
FOCUS: Every new release of a software which has less bugs than the older one is also more complex and has more features...
Gates: No, only if that is what'll sell!
FOCUS: But...
Gates: Only if that is what'll sell! We've never done a piece of software unless we thought it would sell. That's why everything we do in software ...it's really amazing: We do it because we think that's what customers want. That's why we do what we do.
FOCUS: But on the other hand, you would say: Okay, folks, if you don't like these new features, stay with the old version, and keep the bugs?
Gates: No! We have lots and lots of competitors. The new version, it's not there to fix bugs. That's not the reason we come up with a new version.
FOCUS: But there are bugs an any version which people would really like to have fixed.
Gates: No! There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed.
FOCUS: Oh, my God. I always get mad at my computer if MS Word swallows the page numbers of a document which I printed a couple of times with page numbers. If I complain to anybody they say "Well, upgrade from version 5.11 to 6.0".
Gates: No! If you really think there's a bug you should report a bug. Maybe you're not using it properly. Have you ever considered that?
FOCUS: Yeah, I did...
Gates: It turns out Luddites don't know how to use software properly, so you should look into that. The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely not. It's the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard. When we do a new version we put in lots of new things that people are asking for, and so, in no sense, is stability a reason to move to a new version. It's never a reason.
FOCUS: How come I keep being told by computer vendors, "Well, we know about this bug, wait till the next version is there, it'll be fixed"? I hear this all the time. How come? If you're telling me there are no significant bugs in software and there is no reason to do a new version?
Gates: No. I'm saying: We don't do a new version to fix bugs. We don't. Not enough people would buy it. You can take a hundred people using Microsoft Word. Call them up and say, "Would you buy a new version because of bugs?"
You won't get a single person to say they'd buy a new version because of bugs. We'd never be able to sell a release on that basis.
FOCUS: Probably you have other contacts to your software developers. But if Mister Anybody, like me, calls up a store or a support line and says, "Hey listen, there's a bug" ... 90 percent of the time I get the answer "Oh, well, yeah, that's not too bad, wait to the next version and it'll be fixed". That's how the system works.
Gates: Guess how much we spend on phone calls every year.
FOCUS: Hm, a couple of million dollars?
Gates: 500 million dollars a year. We take every one of these phone calls and classify them. That's the input we use to do the next version. So it's like the worlds biggest feedback loop. People call in, we decide what to do on it. Do you want to know what percentage of those phonecalls relates to bugs in the software? Less than one percent.
FOCUS: So people call in to say "Hey listen, I would love to have this and that feature"?
Gates: Actually, that's about five percent. Most of them call to get advice on how to do a certain thing with the software. That's the primary thing. We could have you sit and listen to these phone calls. There are millions and millions of them. It really isn't statistically significant. Sit in and listen to Win 95 calls, sit in and listen to Word calls, and wait, just wait for weeks and weeks for someone to call in and say "Oh, I found a bug in this thing"....
FOCUS: So where does this common feeling of frustration come from that unites all the PC users? Everybody experiences it every day that these things simply don't work like they should.
Gates: Because it's cool. It's like, "Yeah, been there done that. Oh, yeah, I know that bug." I can understand that phenomenon sociologically, not technically.
---------------------------------------------------------
So:
* Bug reports are statistically, therefore actually, unimportant;
* If you want a bug fixed, you are (by definition) in the minority;
* Microsoft doesn't fix bugs because bug fixes are not a significant source of revenue;
* If you think you found a bug, you are wrong, because really it only means you're incompetent; and
* People only complain about bugs to show how cool they are, not because bugs cause any real problems.
ID: 17772
Tech
Attempting to enter a case-sensitive password with caps-lock on.
Not checking to ensure that the computer is indeed plugged in.
Clicking Yes on message boxes without reading them properly and deleting important files.
Forgetting to plug an ethernet cable into their laptop's network card when in the office.
Allowing sessions to timeout when using a web application.
Erroneous data entry.
ID: 17324
Tech
Once upon a time in a land where everyone updates there Facebook status every 5 seconds, there was a young girl named Isabel. When Isabel was reading her cereal box, she thought "Oh.Maybe I should check my Facebook." So Isabel walked over to her Mac and sat down. She typed in Facebook.com and clicked enter. But when she tried to sign in, it said "cookies required." "Okay." Isabel said so she walked into the kitchen and over to the cupboard and looked for some cookies. But she did not find any. So Isabel went to Hyvee with her mom and bought some cookie mix. 10 minutes later she had some cookies.So Isabel got her dads hand saw and sawed the Mac in half. Afterwards, she stuffed every single crumb of cookie inside that computer,and duct taped it back together
ID: 11652
Tech
THIS IS A TRUE STORY!!! My cousin works as a technical support receptionist at a computer company. This is an actual conversation he had one day:
"Hi, I'm having trouble with my computer. It's not working!"
"Well, I'll do my best to help you."
*gets technical information for computer from caller*
"OK, can you press 'Control', then hold down 'Alt' and, then 'Delete'?"
"Hey, it's in French!"
"What is?"
"The keyboard?"
"*sigh* Well, can you press..."
"Oh, darn, I just noticed, the power's off!"
"Well, can you turn it on, please?"
"How?"
"Press the power button."
"Where is it?"
"It's normally a big button on the actual computer, not the monitor."
"Like the lizard?"
"Pardon me?"
"Oh, OK, I got it."
"OK, now press 'Control' and then 'I'..."
" 'I' as in Isabel or 'I' as in Irene?"
And so on and so on..... :) Customers can be so...difficult...
ID: 9426
Tech
% cat "food in cans"
cat: can't open food in cans
% nice man woman
No manual entry for woman.
% rm God
rm: God nonexistent
% ar t God
ar: God does not exist]
% ar r God
ar: creating God
% "How would you rate Quayle's incompetence?
Unmatched ".
% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].
% ^How did the sex change operation go? ^
Modifier failed.
% If I had a ( for every $ the Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.
% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop. >
% sleep with me
bad character
% got a light?
No match.
% man: why did you get a divorce? man::
Too many arguments.
% !:say, what is saccharine?
Bad substitute.
% %blow
%blow: No such job.
The following are not csh but sh :
$ PATH=pretending!/usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!
$ drink <bottle; opener
bottle: cannot open
opener: not found
+10,000 Jokes