Microsoft To Sell Ad Space In Error MessagesLoveMakerGenesis by DOSYou might be an engineer if....IBM Aids African TribeWindows GraphicsTop 10 reasons why compilers must be femaleHow to Hire a ProgrammerThe bright side of Y2KLinux
Microsoft To Sell Ad Space In Error Messages
LoveMaker
Genesis by DOS
You might be an engineer if....
IBM Aids African Tribe
Windows Graphics
Top 10 reasons why compilers must be female
How to Hire a Programmer
The bright side of Y2K
Linux
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Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) announced that it is selling advertising space in the error messages that appear in Windows. Acknowledging for the first time that the average user of their operating system encounters error messages at least several times a day, Microsoft is trying to take financial advantage of the unavoidable opportunity to make an ad impression.
"We estimate that throughout the world at any given moment several million people are getting a `General Protection Fault' or `Illegal Operation' warning. We will be able to generate significant revenue by including a short advertising message along with it," said Microsoft marketing director Nathan Mirror. He also mentioned that Microsoft is intended to add banner ads into its Blue Screen of Death in the near future.
The Justice Department immediately indicated that they intend to investigate whether Microsoft is gaining an unfair advantage in reaching the public with this advertising by virtue of its semi-monopolistic control over error messages.
Welcome to the LoveMaker!
(v3.1 Erosoft Industries, (c) 1993)
At the prompt, please enter your response.
I am the LOVEMAKER. A personalised, interactive poetry assistance program.
What is your name?
>JOHN
What a nice name, JOHN. You must be a man.
>YES
How nice for you. Who is your poem for, JOHN?
>SHEILA
How nice for SHEILA. She must be a woman?
>YES
SHEILA must be very special to you, JOHN. Is she?
>YES
What is the occasion, JOHN?
>VALENTINE'S DAY
SHEILA is a very lucky woman. I will need information about SHEILA for a poem that best reflects your deep feelings for her, JOHN. What colour are her eyes?
>BLUE
Thank you, JOHN. But could you be more specific? Are they blue like the sky after a clearing storm? Are they the icy blue of the far flung fjords, shrouded in mist and mystery? Are they the steely blue of Walter Gropius's later Bauhaus sketch books? Are they a cornflower blue that speaks of Sunday picnics in simpler times?
>THEY LOOK KIND OF GRAY WHEN SHE'S ANGRY
Thank you, JOHN. What about SHEILA'S hair?
>BLOND
Thank you, JOHN. But could you be more specific? Is it ash blond with some auburn like the silky tresses of Rapunzel? When the sun hits it in a certain way in the late afternoon does it look like spun gold? Is it the hard, cheap blond of the streetwise trollop or the dazzling, brilliant satin of Renaissance cherubim?
>I THINK SHE DYES IT
Thank you, JOHN. Are there any other characteristics we should mention in our poem to SHEILA?
JOHN, are you still there?
>SKIN?
Thank you, JOHN. But could you be more specific? Is it fine and alabaster and tightly grained like antique porcelain, slow-fired by master craftsmen? Or is it pink and lustrous like the hand-burnished silver one's Grandmother might be found polishing with gentle, loving strokes on a rainy Sunday afternoon?
>SHE TANS TWICE A WEEK
SHEILA must be very special to you, JOHN. You must have deep feelings for SHEILA to write her a special VALENTINE'S DAY poem.
>YES
How nice for you, JOHN. What kind of poem do you think SHEILA would like?
My MENU (Alt+M) offers the following styles. At the prompt, please choose ONE:
| Couplet | Triplet | Quatrain | Eclogue | Pastoral |
| Sonnet | Elegy | Epic | Ballad | Lyric |
| Ode | Idyll | ??? |
>???
That's O.K., JOHN. How do you see yourself? Please choose ONE:
| Laureate | Bard | Sonneteer | Troubadour | Meistersinger |
| Jongleur | Versifier | Rhapsodist | Lyricist | Other |
>Other
Can you be more specific?
>I GUESS...
Perhaps if you briefly shared your innermost dreams and desires, JOHN?
JOHN?
>I'M THINKING
May I make a suggestion, JOHN?
>SURE
Perhaps you imagine yourself a hopeless romantic, JOHN. A man who lives and loves with passion and desire and appetite. A man who grabs great platters from the groaning board of this world and eats his fill. A man who takes what he wants the moment he sees it and makes it his own. A man who kneads fate in his strong hands, shapes it and commands it. A man with a reckless bent and the courage of fire. A man who sees beauty in a raindrop and all the truth of the universe in the eyes of a child. A man with needs and wants aflame within him. A man of power and means of influence, JOHN. A man destined to be the envy of other men. A man that few can ever understand and fewer still will have the guts to love. A man of whom it might be said... Would that Alexander in his age had but half the measure of his strong stout heart or clear hawk's eyes dimmed and true, pooled with azure purpose. No earthbound mortal he, but master o'er each and all...Would this describe your self-image accurately, JOHN?
>YES
I thought so. I'll use my random SEARCH MODE (Alt+S) to choose an appropriate style for you, JOHN. One that truly expresses your deep feelings for SHEILA on VALENTINE'S DAY. Please wait...
To print poem, please enter command Alt+P at prompt.
>Alt+P
Dear SHEILA,
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Your hair is blond
and your eyes are gray (when angry)
JOHN
Thank you for using LOVEMAKER v3.1 from EROSOFT
In the beginning, there was the computer. And God entered: C:\>Let there be light! Enter user ID C:\>God Enter password C:\>Omniscient Invalid password Enter password C:\>Omnipotent Invalid password Enter password C:\>Technocrat And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Sunday, March 1. C:\>Let there be light! Unrecognizable command C:\>Create light Done C:\>Run heaven and earth And God created Day and Night. And God saw that there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:01:00 AM, Sunday, March 1. And God logged on at 12:02:00 AM, Monday, March 2. C:\>Let there be firmament in the midst of water and light Unrecognizable command. Try again. C:\>Create firmament Done. C:\>Run firmament And God divided the waters. And God saw that there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:01:00 AM, Monday, March 2. And God logged on at 12:02:00 AM, Tuesday, March 3. C:\>Let the waters under heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear and Too many characters in specification string. Try again. C:\>Create dry_land Done. C:\>Run firmament And God divided the waters. And God saw that there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:01:00 AM, Tuesday, March 3. And God logged on at 12:02:00 AM, Wednesday, March 4. C:\>Create lights in the firmament to divide the day from the night Unspecified type. Try again. C:\>Create sun_moon_stars Done C:\>Run sun_moon_stars And God separated the light from the darkness. The sun ruled over the day and the moon and stars ruled over the night. And God saw there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:01:00 AM, Wednesday, March 4. And God logged on at 12:02:00 AM, Thursday, March 5. C:\>Create fish Done C:\>Create fowl Done C:\>Run fish, fowl And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that creepeth wherewith the waters swarmed after its kind and every winged fowl after its kind. And God saw there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:01:00 AM, Thursday, March 5. And God logged on at 12:02:00 AM, Friday, March 6. C:\>Create cattle Done C:\>Create creepy_things Done C:\>Now let us make man in our image Unspecified type. Try again. C:\>Create man Done C:\>Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth Too many command operands. Try again. C:\>Run multiplication Execution terminated. 6 errors.. C:\>Insert breath Done C:\>Run multiplication Execution terminated. 5 errors. C:\>Move man to Garden of Eden Filename: Garden of Eden does not exist. Abort, Retry, Ignore? C:\>Create Garden_of_Eden Too many parameters C:\>Create Garden.edn Done C:\>Move man to Garden.edn Done C:\>Run multiplication Execution terminated. 4 errors. C:\>Copy woman from man Done C:\>Run multiplication Execution terminated. 2 errors. C:\>Create desire Done C:\>Run multiplication And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors. C:\>Create freewill Done C:\>Run freewill And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors. C:\>Undo desire Desire cannot be undone once freewill is created. C:\>Destroy freewill Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed. Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help. C:\>Help Desire cannot be undone once freewill is created. Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed. Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help. C:\>Create tree_of_knowledge And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors. C:\>Create good, evil Done C:\>Activate evil And God saw he had created shame. Warning system error in sector E95. Man and woman no longer located in Garden.edn. 1 errors. C:\>Scan Garden.edn for man, woman Search failed. Abort, Retry, Ignore? C:\>Delete shame Shame cannot be deleted once evil has been activated. C:\>Destroy freewill Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed. Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help. C:\>Stop Unrecognizable command. Try again C:\>Ctrl_Break C:\>Ctrl_Break C:\>Ctrl_Break ATTENTION ALL USERS *** ATTENTION ALL USERS: COMPUTER GOING DOWN FOR REGULAR DAY OF MAINTENANCE AND REST IN FIVE MINUTES. PLEASE LOG OFF. C:\>Create new world You have exceeded allocated file space. You must destroy old files before new ones can be created. C:\>Destroy earth Destroy earth: Please confirm. C:\>Destroy earth confirmed COMPUTER DOWN *** COMPUTER DOWN. SERVICE WILL RESUME SUNDAY, MARCH 8 AT 6:00 AM. YOU MUST SIGN OFF NOW. And God logged off at 11:59:59 PM, Friday, March 6. On March 7, God rested. On March 8, God created Macintosh. And God saw that it was good.
KABINDA, ZAIRE--In a move IBM officials are hailing as a major step in the company's ongoing worldwide telecommunications revolution, M'wana Ndeti, a member of Zaire's Bantu tribe, used an IBM global uplink network modem yesterday to crush a nut.
Ndeti, who spent 20 minutes trying to open the nut by hand, easily cracked it open by smashing it repeatedly with the powerful modem. "I could not crush the nut by myself," said the 47-year-old Ndeti, who added the savory nut to a thick, peanut-based soup minutes later. "With IBM's help, I was able to break it." Ndeti discovered the nut-breaking, 28.8 V.34 modem yesterday, when IBM was shooting a commercial in his southwestern Zaire village. During a break in shooting, which shows African villagers eagerly teleconferencing via computer with Japanese schoolchildren, Ndeti snuck onto the set and took the modem, which he believed would serve well as a "smashing" utensil.
Just after Ndeti shattered the nut, a 200-person Southern Baptist gospel choir, on hand for the taping of the IBM commercial, broke out into raucous, joyous song in celebration of the tribesman's accomplishment.
IBM officials were not surprised the longtime computer giant was able to provide Ndeti with practical solutions to his everyday problems. "Our telecommunications systems offer people all over the world global networking solutions that fit their specific needs," said Herbert Ross, IBM's director of marketing. "Whether you're a nun cloistered in an Italian abbey or an Aborigine in Australia's Great Sandy Desert, IBM has the ideas to get you where you want to go today."
According to Ndeti, of the modem's many powerful features, most impressive was its hard plastic casing, which easily sustained several minutes of vigorous pounding against a large stone. "I put the nut on a rock, and I hit it with the modem," Ndeti said. "The modem did not break. It is a good modem."
Ndeti was so impressed with the modem that he purchased a new, state-of-the-art IBM workstation, complete with a PowerPC 601microprocessor, a quad-speed internal CD-ROM drive and three 16-bit ethernet networking connectors. The tribesman has already made good use of the computer system, fashioning a gazelle trap out of its wires, a boat anchor out of the monitor and a crude but effective weapon from its mouse.
"This is a good computer," said Ndeti, carving up a just-captured gazelle with the computer's flat, sharp internal processing device. "I am using every part of it. I will cook this gazelle on the keyboard." Hours later, Ndeti capped off his delicious gazelle dinner by smoking the computer's 200-page owner's manual.
IBM spokespeople praised Ndeti's choice of computers. "We are pleased that the Bantu people are turning to IBM for their business needs," said company CEO William Allaire. "From Kansas City to Kinshasa, IBM is bringing the world closer together. Our cutting-edge technology is truly creating a global village." The Bantu tribesmen are members of an ever-growing, international community of users who have turned to IBM to solve their networking needs. Jean-Claude DuMont, a goatherder from the French region of Brittany who is working on an Indiana University Ph.D. in biology via internet, recently looked into IBM's new computer-satellite data uplink, which offers instant access to all library files worldwide. "With IBM's new uplink service, I can access any file I want, any time I want," DuMont told fellow goatherder Pierre Valmont during a recent walk through a rye field. "I can even find out how many points Michael Jordan scored last night." Responded Valmont: "Radical."
by Kevin D. Weeks
VB Tech Journal
January 1998
Forget about competency tests, previous work history, personality profiles like the MBTI, reference-checking, and follow-up interviews. After years of rigorous and admittedly maverick research, I've identified five key characteristics you can use to quickly assess the fitness of a programmer candidate. I humbly submit that if you follow my advice and check for these attributes, you'll shorten your hiring cycle and simultaneously increase your success rate.
The best programmers prefer cats as pets. I've canvassed hundreds of programmers on the subject of preferred pets, and despite the odd ferret-lover (and believe me, ferret-lovers are odd), time after time cats turn out to be the non-human companion of choice. Think about it; it makes perfect sense because programmers are human cats. Cats are night animals, as are programmers. Cats are independent, like programmers. Cats prefer to be left alone except when they want attention, and so do programmers. Cats are notoriously elegant animals and ... uhm, well ... programmers love elegant code. What's more, software guru Meilir Page-Jones has likened managing programmers to herding cats.
Turning to the next characteristic, programmers have a highly developed sense of the absurd. And if you think about it, this makes no sense at all. I don't know why so many programmers can quote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or know the entire Naughty Hungarian Phrase Book skit, but they do. The next time you interview a programmer candidate throw a "You're all individuals" at him and see what he says.
Perhaps a sense of the absurd matters because so much of what developers put up with is absurd - absurd schedules, absurd requirements, absurd hours.
Treating the absurdities of the average development process with humour makes developers' jobs much easier.
Developers are usually science-fiction fans. Great programmers love technology, especially technology that doesn't yet exist. You're in a business where the only constant is change, and you need developers who don't mind a few arrows in their backs. Make sure your candidate has read Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. And remember, every programmer worth her salt knows what grok means. Many developers also are musicians, painters, or photographers. Some will claim this is because both programming and artistic endeavours require great creativity. They're wrong. It's because programming is more like painting than engineering. Like painters, when programmers make mistakes, they just code right over them.
Then there's the matter of puns. I've witnessed online pun-fests that lasted as long as a week, with as many as 30 programmers trying to outdo each other. I've noticed that some participants are punctilious about staying with the root word, while others approach them as pun-tests where misspelling words is permitted.
Again, the predilection makes perfect sense. Programming is about using language to accomplish something, and programmers have a highly evolved appreciation of how a language can be manipulated to specific ends. Puns are ways of both displaying a mastery of language and honing it.
So there you have it. Look for developers who love cats, quote Monty Python, read Heinlein, play guitar, and are accomplished punsters. If you find all these characteristics in a single individual, hire that person immediately - confident you're hiring a truly great developer.
January 4th 2000
Re: Holiday Pay
Our records indicate that you have not used any vacation time over the past 100 year(s). As I'm sure you are aware, employees are granted 3 weeks of paid leave per year or pay in lieu of time off. One additional week is granted for every 5 years of service.
Please either take 9,400 days off work or notify our office and your next pay cheque will reflect payment of £8,277,432.22 which will include all pay and interest for the past 1,200 months.
Sincerely,
Automated Payroll Processing
gawk, date, finger, wait, unzip, touch, nice, suck, strip, mount, fsck, umount, make clean, sleep.
Who needs porn when you have /usr/bin?