TECH

ID: 115

Tech

Stories From the Crypt

I called a company and asked to speak to Bob. The person who answered said, "Bob is on vacation. Would you like to hold?"
I worked with an individual who plugged their power strip back into itself and for the life of them could not understand why their computer would not turn on.
"Do you know anything about this fax-machine?"
"A little. What's wrong?"
"Well, I sent a fax, and the recipient called back to say all she received was a cover-sheet and a blank page. I tried it again, and the same thing happened."
"How did you load the sheet?"
"It's a pretty sensitive memo, and I didn't want anyone else to read it by accident. So I folded it so only the recipient could open it and read it."

I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do you need some help?" I asked.
"I knew I should have replaced the battery in this remote control door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think that store would have a battery for this?"
"Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?" I asked.
"No, just this remote," she answered, handing it and the car keys to me.
As I took the keys and manually unlocked the door, I said, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries? It's a long walk."

Tech Support: What does the screen say now?
Caller: It says 'Hit ENTER when ready.'
Tech Support: Well?
Caller: How do I know when it's ready?

A man moved to New Mexico and called his credit company to change his address. When he told the girl where he was moving, she told him that she couldn't help him since they didn't issue cards outside of the United States!

My friend called his car insurance company to tell them to change his address from Texas to Vermont. The woman who took the call asked where Vermont was. As he tried to explain, she interrupted and said, "Look, I'm not stupid or anything, but what state is it in?"

Several years ago, we had an intern who was none too swift. One day, he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?"
"Just use copier machine paper," she told him.
With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.

One of our servers crashed. I was watching our new system administrator trying to restore it. He inserted a CD and needed to type a path name to a directory named "i386."
He started to type it and paused, asking me, "Where's the key for that line thing?"
I asked what he was talking about, and he said, "You know, that one that looks like an upside-down exclamation mark."
I replied, "You mean the letter 'i'?"
And he said, "Yeah, that's it!"

I was in a car dealership a while ago when a large motor home was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of repair and the whole thing generally looked like it had been an extra in "Twister." I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had set the cruise control, and then went in back to make a sandwich.

ID: 3157

Tech

Microsoft's Useless

A helicopter was flying in Seattle when suddenly an electrical malfunction disabled all electronic navigation and communication equipment.

Due to the amount of fog, the pilot could not determine the helicopter's position. He spotted a tall building, flew toward it, circled, and held up a handwritten sign that said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window. Their sign said "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER."

The pilot thanked them by smiling and waving, determined the route to SEATAC airport and landed safely. When they were finally on the ground, his co-pilot asked him how he'd done it.

"I knew it had to be the Microsoft building, because they gave me a technically correct but utterly and completely useless answer."

ID: 3406

Tech

Carol was Having Trouble...

Carol was having trouble with her computer. So she called Glenn, the computer guy, over to her desk. Glenn clicked a couple buttons and solved the problem.

As he was walking away, Carol called after him, "So, what was wrong?" And he replied, "It was an ID Ten T Error."

A puzzled expression ran riot over Carol's face. "An ID Ten T Error? What's that ... in case I need to fix it again??"

He gave her a grin... "Haven't you ever heard of an ID Ten T Error before?" "No," replied Carol. "Write it down," he said, "and I think you'll figure it out."

(She wrote...) I D 1 0 T

ID: 6882

Tech

You Might be a Linux User If...

(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: 10773

Tech

Top Ten Sign Your Computer Is Bad

10. Lower corner of screen has the words "Etch-a-sketch" on it.

9. Its celebrity spokesman is that "Hey Vern!" guy.

8. In order to start it, you need some jumper cables and a friend's car.

7. Its slogan is "Pentium: redefining mathematics".

6. The "quick reference" manual is 120 pages long.

5. Whenever you turn it on, all the dogs in your neighborhood start howling.

4. The screen often displays the message, "Ain't it break time yet?"

3. The manual contains only one sentence: "Good Luck!"

2. The only chip inside is a Dorito.

1. You've decided that your computer is an excellent addition to your fabulous paperweight collection.

ID: 10516

Tech

Things You Learn From Video Games

Things You Learn from Video Games

There is no problem that cannot be overcome by force.

If it moves, DESTROY IT!

Piloting any vehicle is simple and requires no training.

One lone "good guy" can defeat an infinite number of "badguys."

Make sure you eat all food lying on the ground.

You can break things and get away with it.

You can push other vehicles off the road and get away with it.

If someone dies, they disappear.

If you get mad enough, you can fight even better.

You can overcome most adversaries simply by having enough quarters.

You can operate all weapons without training.

No matter how long you fight, you can always fight again.

Death is reversible (only for you!)

Ninjas are common, and frequently fight in public.

Whenever big fat mean guys are about to croak, they begin flashing red or yellow.

You never run out of ammunition, just grenades.

All women wear revealing clothes and have great bodies.

Shoot everything. If it blows up or dies, it was bad.

Don't worry if your vehicle crashes and explodes. A new vehicle will appear in its place.

A thousand-to-one odds against you is NOT a problem.

ID: 12137

Tech

Haiku Error Messages

The Web site you seek
cannot be located but
countless others exist

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

Everything is gone;
Your life's work has been destroyed.
Squeeze trigger (yes/no)?

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

Seeing my great fault
Through darkening blue windows
I begin again

The code was willing,
It considered your request,
But the chips were weak.

Printer not ready.
Could be a fatal error.
Have a pen handy?

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

Errors have occurred.
We won't tell you where or why.
Lazy programmers.

Server's poor response
Not quick enough for browser.
Timed out, plum blossom.

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.

Login incorrect.
Only perfect spellers may
enter this system.

This site has been moved.
We'd tell you where, but then we'd
have to delete you.

Wind catches lily
scatt'ring petals to the wind:
segmentation fault

ABORTED effort:
Save and close all that you have.
You ask way too much.

First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.

With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.

The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.

The Web site you seek
cannot be located but
endless others exist.

Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down

A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.

ID: 7669

Tech

Bill Gates Quotes

Perhaps the Most Truthful: on Microsoft marketing:
"There won't be anything we won't 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 can't make it good, at least make it look good."

from "OS/2 Programmer's 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 don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no-one who likes the PC who doesn't 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.

There's 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 don't know what you need Windows NT for, you don't 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, you'll 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:

Microsoft's 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."

ID: 2767

Tech

Computer--Britney

My computer is like Britney Spears; cheap, white, and plastic.

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