ID: 16118
Tech
In the beginning, there was nothing but Apple. And the PC was without form and void, and the darkness was on the face of its hard drive. And Bill said, Let there be DOS: And there was DOS. And Bill looked upon it, and it was good, and with it the PC slew the Apple. And DOS grew and grew, until its number was legion if you counted the decimal points, and still it was good.
And Bill grew large with ambition, and he decreed there should be a processor of words; and lo, there was Word. And Bill sayeth, Let there be a thingy for the crunching of numbers, and lo, there was Excel, and did his kingdom grow apace.
But there had arisen in the land the thing called Macintosh, sprung from the intransigent Apple-men, and Bill looked upon it, and it was better.
Rapidly did he decree that Word should be made to run upon it, and after that Excel, and then all the other fruits of his efforts, but still he was wrathful.
So Bill did order his minions to come forth with Windows, and when they did, he looked upon it, and it was bad.
So he sent them back to try again, assuring all the world they would get it right this time, yet they did not.
Unrelenting, Bill forced yet a third mighty blow, and when it came forth, Bill did order his trumpets to blow, and his chorus to sing, and his criers to cry, until the din could be heard throughout the land; and when he looked upon this third version of Windows, he saw it was not all that great, but like hotcakes did it sell.
And thus did Bill gloat, for the world proclaimed he had matched the lowly Macintosh, and his praises were sung throughout the land.
And so he ordered another, mightier, more magnificient version made, and his henchmen and henchwomen did labor hard.
Still it was not forthcoming in the year promised, nor the year promised next, and rumors did abound, and magazines did overflow with secret peeks, and columnists did heap their scorn upon it. And came the minions of the Justice Department, bent upon proving Bill monopolous, yet before his wrath did they quail, and proclaim him innocent, mostly.
And that which was once called Chicago became known as Windows 95, and the suspense built throughout the land, and Bill, remembering what had gone before, set about building a great Hype.
Into his Hype he put the greatest mouths of the land, and scattered the fruits of his profits so heavily that he bought hosts of angels to sing, and Rolling Stones songs, and trumpets and horns and drums without number. As the time of birthing grew nigh, he purchased television time without end, and appeared thereon himself, and bought entire editions of newspapers to give away unto the faithful, and traveling circuses to visit each great city.
And so when Windows 95 was born did hysteria rule the land, as the choirs sang and the trumpets and horns did blare and the televisions and the newspapers charge their followers to go forth and buy.
Heeding this, the populace did rush to the marketplace at the stroke of midnight, when even the cock doth sleep, and did push and shove and come even to blows the better to secure their own copies lest they be thought ignorant, or uncool, or hamsters in the eyes of Bill.
And Bill looked upon what he had wrought, and he giggled, and rubbeth his hands together, and even in the moment of his triumph, began to think of Next Time.
ID: 992
Tech
Darn those pushy metric system advocates!
Give them 2.54 cm., and they'll take 1.6093 km!
ID: 1635
Tech
- Nice Set of Floppies!
- Hey, how 'bout I take off your cover and insert a bigger CPU.
- I'd like to play on your laptop.
- Need me to unzip your files?
- If you were an ISP, I'd dial you all day long!
- I'd like to boot up your PC!
- I'll bet my hard drive is the biggest you've ever seen!
- I've got a 21 inch... (monitor)
- I'd get a T3 to watch your streaming video...
- Your homepage or mine?
ID: 7669
Tech
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: 2390
Tech
486 - The average IQ needed to understand a PC.
State-of-the-art - Any computer you can't afford.
Obsolete - Any computer you own.
Microsecond - The time it takes for your state-of-the-art computer to become obsolete.
G3 - Apple's new Macs that make you say "Gee, three times faster than the computer I bought for the same price a Microsecond ago."
Syntax Error - Walking into a computer store and saying, "Hi, I want to buy a computer and money is no object."
Hard Drive - The sales technique employed by computer salesmen, esp. after a Syntax Error.
GUI - What your computer becomes after spilling your coffee on it. (pronounced "gooey")
Keyboard - The standard way to generate computer errors.
Mouse - An advanced input device to make computer errors easier to generate.
Floppy - The state of your wallet after purchasing a computer.
Portable Computer - A device invented to force businessmen to work at home, on vacation, and on business trips.
Disk Crash - A typical computer response to any critical deadline.
Power User - Anyone who can format a disk from DOS.
System Update - A quick method of trashing ALL of your software.
ID: 10516
Tech
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: 2233
Tech
An engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were on their way to a tech conference on the other side of the mountains.
Half way down the other side, the brakes gave out, and the engineer steered for all his life to keep the car from going clean off the edge.
It was at the last second, skidding sideways towards doom, that the car finally stopped. One tire dropped over the edge.
The three sprang from the car, shaking and panting. The engineer was the first to speak.
"We could have been killed! I would like to get under the car and see just what happened to those brakes. Something has to be fixed."
The systems analyst agreed. "Yes, but I'd like to see the design blueprints. We could fix the problem with these cars with a little research."
The programmer was scratching his head. "I wonder if that's repeatable."
ID: 16121
Tech
Believe it or not, Windows95 is not a virus, as many (millions) have claimed. You want proof? Look no further!
What's the difference between Windows95 and a virus?
Quality
Replicates Quickly
Virus: Yes
Windows95: Yes
Uses up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so
Virus: Yes
Windows95: Yes
Occasional hard disk destruction
Virus: Yes
Windows95: Yes
Usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems
Virus: Yes
Windows95:Yes
Will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow and the user will buy new hardware
Virus:Yes
Windows95:Yes
Occasional meltdown of vital components
Virus:Yes
Windows95:Yes
Until now it seems Windows is a virus, but there are several fundamental differences.
Viruses:
1.are well supported by their authors
2.are running on most systems
3.have fast, compact and efficient source code
4.become more sophisticated as they mature
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.
+10,000 Jokes