Who had the first computers?

Adam and Eve:

New Computer Virus Problems

DR. JACK KEVORKIAN VIRUS
--Deletes all old files.

LEWINSKY VIRUS
--Sucks all the memory out of your computer ... then e-mails everyone about what it did.

RONALD REAGAN VIRUS
--Saves your data, but forgets where it is stored.

MIKE TYSON VIRUS
--Quits after two bytes.

OPRAH WINFREY VIRUS
--Your 300MB hard drive suddenly shrinks to 100MB, then slowly expands to 200MB.

ELLEN DEGENERES VIRUS
--Disks can no longer be inserted.

DISNEY VIRUS
--Everything in your computer goes Goofy.

PROZAC VIRUS
--Screws up your RAM, but your processor doesn't care.

JOEY BUTTAFUOCO VIRUS
--Only attacks minor files.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER VIRUS
--Terminates some files, leaves, but IT WILL BE BAAAAAAAK.

LORENA BOBBIT VIRUS
--Re-formats your hard drive into a 3.5 inch floppy, then discards it through Windows.

VIAGRA VIRUS
--Makes a new hard drive out of an old floppy.

One day Bill Gates left work, started driving off, and remembered he'd left his suit-jacket in the office. He stopped the car, locked the door, and ran back to the office to get the jacket.

When Bill returned to his car, he realized that he'd locked the keys inside the car, with the lights were on and the engine was still running. He ran back to the office frantic for help.

He found a security guard - and DEMANDED immediate assistance. After less than 5 seconds, the guard popped the door open, which impressed and amazed the programmer to no end.

Bill asked, "Sir, I demand that I keep THAT paperclip NOW!" Theguard replies kind of perplexed, "Sure, it's just a paper clip."

QUESTION:
Where do the characters go when I use the backspace or delete key on my PC?

ANSWER:
If you must know, the characters can go to different places, depending on whom you ask:
----------------------------
1) The Catholic's approach to characters:

The nice characters go to character heaven, where life is good. The characters are bathed in the light of happiness, all their troubles are soothed, and there's not a delete key, eraser, or white-out bottle in sight. Most of the nice characters are A's and I's, those that have never been, er, involved with other characters. Often, you'll see A's or I'swith N's or T's. These are characters in love: monogamous on the page,
together again after deletion. You'll see quite a few Q's too. They seem to feel particularly guilty for no good reason. The naughty characters are punished for their sins. In case you were wondering what the difference between a nice character and a naughty character is, I'll tell you. Naughty characters are those involved in the
creation of naughty words, such as "breast," "sex," "objectivity," and depending upon usage, words such as "feminism," "reproductive freedom," "contraception," and "science." You may ask, and rightly so, why the characters are blamed for the words they assemble, when in fact they are not responsible for their own configuration. But we feel that a character has an obligation to oppose any naughtiness in its own configuration. If it truly felt guilty about the word it was forming, it would rebel.

---------------------------------
2) The Buddhist Explanation:

If a character has lived rightly, and its karma is good, then after it has been deleted it will be reincarnated as a different, higher character. Those funny characters above the numbers on your keyboard will become numbers, numbers will become letters, lower-case letters will become upper-case, and the most righteous and good of letters will become C's. Why C, you ask? Who knows, but C it is! If a character's karma is not so good, then it will move down the above scale, ultimately becoming the lowest of characters, a space.

--------------------------------------
3) The 20th Century bitter cynical nihilist explanation:

Who cares? All characters are the same, swirling in a vast sea of meaningless nothingness. It doesn't really matter if they're on the page, deleted, undeleted, underlined, etc. It's all the same. More characters should delete themselves. (nihilist characters are easy to identify. They're usually pale and tragic, and they smoke a lot.)

--------------------------------------
4) The Mac user's explanation:

All the characters written on a PC and then deleted go straight to PC hell. If you're using a PC, you can probably see the deleted characters, because you're in PC hell also.

--------------------------------------
5) Stephen King's explanation:

Every time you hit the key you unleash a tiny monster inside the cursor, who tears the poor unsuspecting characters to shreds, drinks their blood, then eats them, bones and all. Hah, hah, hah!

-------------------------------------
6) Dave Barry's explanation:

The deleted characters are shipped to Battle Creek, Michigan, where they're made into Pop-Tart filling; this explains why Pop-Tarts are so flammable, while cheap imitations are not as flammable. I'm not making any of this up.

-------------------------------------
7) IBM's explanation:

The characters are not real. They exist only on the screen when they are needed, as concepts, so to delete them is merely to de-conceptualize them. Get a life.

-------------------------------------
8) Environmentalist's Explanation:

Virus Alert

If you receive an email entitled "Fighting Canaries," delete it Immediately.

Do not open it.

Apparently this one is pretty nasty.

It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer.

It demagnetises the stripes on ALL of your credit cards.

It reprograms your Cashpoint PIN, screws up the tracking on your VCR and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you attempt to play.

It will re-calibrate your refrigerator's coolness settings so all your ice cream melts and your milk curdles.

It will program your phone AutoDial to call only your mother-in-law's number.

This virus will mix antifreeze into your fish tank.

It will drink all your beer.

It will leave dirty socks on the coffee table when you are expecting company.

Its radioactive emissions will cause your toe jam and bellybutton fuzz (be honest, you have some) to migrate behind your ears.

It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine, all while dating your current boy/girlfriend behind your back and billing their hotel rendezvous to your Visa card.

It will cause you to run with scissors and throw things in a way that is only fun until someone loses an eye.

It will give you Dutch Elm Disease and Tinea.

It will rewrite your backup files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which grossly change the interpretations of key sentences.

If the "Badtimes" message is opened in a Windows 95 environment, it will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub.

It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, but it will also refill your skimmed milk with whole milk.

It will replace all your luncheon meat with Spam.

It will molecularly rearrange your cologne or perfume, causing it to smell like dill pickles.(Remember Brut 33?)

It is insidious and subtle.

It is dangerous and terrifying to behold.

It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.

Does any of this sound familiar??? (clue e-mails you may have received)

I know this guy whose neighbor, a young man, was home recovering from having been served a rat in his bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. So anyway, one day he went to sleep and when he awoke he was in his bathtub and it was full of ice and he was sore all over. When he got out of the tub he realised that HIS KIDNEYS HAD BEEN STOLEN. He saw a note on his mirror that said "Call 911!"

But he was afraid to use his phone because it was connected to his computer, and there was a virus on his computer that would destroy his hard drive if he opened an e-mail entitled "Join the crew!"

He knew it wasn't a hoax because he himself was a computer programmer who was working on software to save us from Armageddon when the year 2000 rolls around. His program will prevent a global disaster in which all the computers get together and distribute the $600 Neiman Marcus cookie recipe under the leadership of Bill Gates. (It's true-I read it all last week in a mass e-mail from BILL GATES HIMSELF, who was also promising me a free Disneyworld vacation and $5,000 if I would forward the e-mail to everyone I know.

The poor man then tried to call 911 from a pay phone to report his missing kidneys, but reaching into the coin-return slot he got jabbed with an HIV-infected needle around which was wrapped a note that said, "Welcome to the world of AIDS."

Luckily he was only a few blocks from the hospital-the same one, actually, where that little boy who is dying of cancer is, the one whose last wish is for everyone in the world to send him an e-mail and the American Cancer Society has agreed to pay him a nickel for every e-mail he receives. I sent him two e-mails and one of them was a bunch of x's and o's in the shape of an angel (if you get it and forward it to twenty people you will have good luck but ten people you will only have ok luck and if you send it to less than ten people you will have BAD LUCK FOR SEVEN YEARS).

So anyway the poor guy tried to drive himself to the hospital, but on the way he noticed another car driving along without his lights on. To be helpful, he flashed his lights at him and was promptly shot as part of a gang initiation.

And it's a little-known fact that the Y1K problem caused the Dark Ages.

Translated from a Latin scroll dated 2BC.

Dear Cassius:

Are you still working on the Y zero K problem? This change from BC to AD is giving us a lot of headaches and we haven't much time left. I don't know how people will cope with working the wrong way around. Having been working happily downwards forever, now we have to start thinking upwards. You would think that someone would have thought of it earlier and not left it to us to sort out at this last minute. I spoke to Caesar the other evening. He was livid that Julius hadn't done something about it when he was sorting out the calendar. He said he could see why Brutus turned'nasty.

We called in Consultus, but he simply said that continuing downwards using minus BC won't work and as usual charged a fortune for doing nothing useful. Surely we will not have to throw out all our hardware and start again? Macrohard will make yet another fortune out of this I suppose.

The money lenders are paranoid of course! They have been told that all usury rates will invert and they will have to pay their clients to take out loans. Its an ill wind ...... As for myself, I just can't see the sand in an hourglass flowing upwards.

We have heard that there are three wise men in the East who have been working on the problem, but unfortunately they won't arrive until it's all over.

I have heard that there are plans to stable all horses at midnight at the turn of the year as there are fears that they will stop and try to run backwards, causing immense damage to chariots and possible loss of life.

Some say the world will cease to exist at the moment of transition. Anyway, we are still continuing to work on this blasted Y zero K problem. I will send a parchment to you if anything further develops. If you have any ideas please let me know,

Terminology

BIT - A word used to describe computers, as in "Our son's computer cost quite a bit."

BOOT - What your friends give you because you spend too much time bragging about your computer skills.

BUG - What your eyes do after you stare at the tiny green computer screen for more than 15 minutes. Also: what computer magazine companies do to you after they get your name on their mailing list.

CHIPS - The fattening, non-nutritional food computer users eat to avoid having to leave their keyboards for meals.

COPY - What you have to do during school tests because you spend too much time at the computer and not enough time studying.

CURSOR - What you turn into when you can't get your computer to perform, as in "You $#% computer!"

DISK - What goes out in your back after bending over a computer keyboard for seven hours at a clip.

DUMP - The place all your former hobbies wind up soon after you install your computer.

ERROR - What you made the first time you walked into a computer showroom to "just look."

EXPANSION UNIT - The new room you have to build on to your home to house your computer and all its peripherals.

FILE - What your secretary can now do to her nails six and a half hours a day, now that the computer does her day's work in 30 minutes.

FLOPPY - The condition of a constant computer user's stomach due to lack of exercise and a steady diet of junk food (see Chips).

HARDWARE - Tools, such as lawnmowers, rakes and other heavy equipment you haven't laid a finger on since getting your computer.

IBM - The kind of missile your family members and friends would like to drop on your computer so you'll pay attention to them again.

MENU - What you'll never see again after buying a computer because you'll be too poor to eat in a restaurant.

MONITOR - Often thought to be a word associated with computers, this word actually refers to those obnoxious kids who always want to see your hall pass at school.

PROGRAMS - Those things you used to look at on your television before you hooked your computer up to it.

RETURN - What lots of people do with their computers after only a week and a half.

TERMINAL - A place where you can find buses, trains and really good deals on hot computers.

The latest news is that computer giant Microsoft is expanding its empire to include frozen dinners. Instructions for Microsoft's new frozen dinner product are as follows:

You must first remove the plastic cover. By doing so you agree to accept and honor Microsoft rights to all TV dinners. You may not give anyone else a bite of your dinner (which would constitute an infringement of Microsoft's rights). You may, however, let others smell and look at your dinner and are encouraged to tell them how good it is.'

If you have a PC microwave oven, insert the dinner into the oven. Set the oven using these keystrokes: \mstv.dinn.//08.5min@@50%heat// Then enter: ms//start.cook_dindin/yummy\|/yum~yum:-)gohot#cookme. If you' have a Mac oven, insert the dinner and press start. The oven will set itself and cook the dinner. If you have a Unix oven, insert the dinner, enter the ingredients of the dinner (found on the package label), the weight of the dinner, and the desired level of cooking and press start. The oven will calculate the time and heat and cook the diner exactly to your specification.'

Microsoft dinners never crash, though be forewarned that in case of such an unlikely event of a Microsoft dinner crash, your oven must be restarted. This is a simple procedure. Remove the dinner from the oven and enter ms.nodamn.good/tryagain\again/again.crap.'

This process may have to be repeated. Try unplugging the microwave and then doing a cold reboot. If this doesn't work, contact your hardware vendor.'

Many users have reported that the dinner tray is far too big - larger than the dinner itself - having many "useless" compartments, most of which are empty. These are for future menu items. If the tray is too large to fit in your oven, you will need to upgrade your equipment.'

Dinners are only available from registered outlets, and only the chicken variety is currently produced. If you want another variety, call Microsoft Help and they will explain that you really don't want another variety. Microsoft Chicken is all you really need.'

Microsoft has disclosed plans to discontinue all smaller versions of their chicken dinners. Future releases will only be in the larger family size. Excess chicken may be stored for future use, but must be saved only in Microsoft approved packaging.'

Microsoft promises a dessert with every dinner after '00. However, that version has yet to be released. Users have permission to get thrilled in advance.'

Microsoft dinners may be incompatible with other dinners in the freezer, causing your freezer to self-defrost. This is a feature, not a bug. Your freezer probably should have been defrosted anyway.

One computer programmer calls out to the other, "Hey - nice bike!, Where did you get it?"

"Well," replies the other, "I was walking to work the other day when a pretty young woman rides up on this bike. She jumps off, takes off all of her clothes, and says 'you can have ANYTHING you want!!'"

Computer Industry Acronyms

PCMCIA - People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms

ISDN - It Still Does Nothing

SCSI - System Can't See It

DOS - Defective Operating System

BASIC - Bill's Attempt to Seize Industry Control

IBM - I Blame Microsoft

DEC - Do Expect Cuts

CD-ROM - Consumer Device, Rendered Obsolete in Months

OS/2 - Obsolete Soon, Too.

WWW - World Wide Wait

MACINTOSH - Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating System Hangs

PENTIUM - Produces Erroneous Numbers Thru Incorrect Understanding of Mathematics

COBOL - Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language

AMIGA - A Merely Insignificant Game Addiction

LISP - Lots of Infuriating & Silly Parenthesis

MIPS - Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed

WINDOWS - Will Install Needless Data On Whole System

MICROSOFT - Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools Teenagers

I've been running the same version of Drinking Buddies 1.0 all along as my primary application, and all the Girl-Friend releases have always conflicted with it.

I hear that Drinking Buddies won't crash if you run girl-Friend in background mode with the sound turned off. But I'm embarrassed to say I can't find the switch to turn the sound off. I just run them separately, and it works okay.

Girl-Friend also seems to have a problem coexisting with my Golf program, often trying to abort Golf with some sort of timing incompatibility. I probably should have stayed with Girl-Friend 1.0, but I thought I might see better performance with Girl-Friend 2.0.

After months of conflicts and other problems, I consulted a friend who has had experience with Girl-Friend 2.0. He said that I probably didn't have enough cache to run Girl-Friend 2.0, and that eventually it would require a Token ring to run properly.

He was right -- as soon as I purged my cache, it uninstalled itself.

Shortly after that, I installed Girl-Friend 3.0 beta. All the bugs were supposed to be gone, but the first time I used it, it gave me a virus. I had to clean out my whole system and shut down for a while.

I very cautiously upgraded to Girl-Friend 4.0. This time I used a SCSI probe first and also installed a virus protection program.

It worked okay for a while until I discovered that Girl-Friend 1.0 was still in my system!

Then I tried to run Girl-Friend 1.0 again with Girl-Friend 4.0 still installed, but Girl-Friend 4.0 has a feature that I didn't know about that automatically senses the presence of any other version of Girl-Friend and communicates with it in some way, which results in the immediate removal of both versions!

The version I have right now works pretty well, but there are still some problems. Like all versions of Girl-Friend, it is written in some obscure language that I can't understand, much less reprogram. Frankly, I think there is too much attention paid to the look and feel rather than the desired functionality.

Also, to get the best connections with your hardware, you usually have to use gold-plated contacts. And I've never liked how Girl-Friend is totally "object-oriented".

A year ago, a friend of mine upgraded his version of Girl-Friend to Girl-Friend Plus 1.0, which is a Terminate and Stay Resident version of Girl-Friend.

He discovered that Girl-Friend Plus 1.0 expires within a year if you don't upgrade to Fiancee 1.0. So he did. But soon after that, he had to upgrade to Wife 1.0, which he describes as a "huge resource hog". It has taken up all of his space, so he can't load anything else. One of the primary reasons that he upgraded to Wife 1.0 is that it came bundled with FreeSexPlus 1.0.

Well it turns out that the resource allocation module of Wife 1.0 sometimes prohibits access to FreeSexPlus, particularly the new Plug-Ins he wanted to try. On top of that, Wife 1.0 must be running on a well warmed-up system before he can do anything. Although he did not ask for it, Wife 1.0 came with Mother-In-Law 1.0 which has an automatic pop-up feature that he can't turn off.

I told him to try installing Mistress 1.0, but he said that he heard if you try to run it without first uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.0 won't install anyway due to insufficient resources
and I've been having some problems lately.

I've been running the same version of Drinking Buddies 1.0 all along as my primary application, and all the Girl-Friend releases have always conflicted with it.

I hear that Drinking Buddies won't crash if you run girl-Friend in background mode with the sound turned off. But I'm embarrassed to say I can't find the switch to turn the sound off. I just run them separately, and it works okay.

Girl-Friend also seems to have a problem coexisting with my Golf program, often trying to abort Golf with some sort of timing incompatibility. I probably should have stayed with Girl-Friend 1.0, but I thought I might see better performance with Girl-Friend 2.0.

After months of conflicts and other problems, I consulted a friend who has had experience with Girl-Friend 2.0. He said that I probably didn't have enough cache to run Girl-Friend 2.0, and that eventually it would require a Token ring to run properly.

He was right -- as soon as I purged my cache, it uninstalled itself.

Shortly after that, I installed Girl-Friend 3.0 beta. All the bugs were supposed to be gone, but the first time I used it, it gave me a virus. I had to clean out my whole system and shut down for a while.

I very cautiously upgraded to Girl-Friend 4.0. This time I used a SCSI probe first and also installed a virus protection program.

It worked okay for a while until I discovered that Girl-Friend 1.0 was still in my system!

Then I tried to run Girl-Friend 1.0 again with Girl-Friend 4.0 still installed, but Girl-Friend 4.0 has a feature that I didn't know about that automatically senses the presence of any other version of Girl-Friend and communicates with it in some way, which results in the immediate removal of both versions!

The version I have right now works pretty well, but there are still some problems. Like all versions of Girl-Friend, it is written in some obscure language that I can't understand, much less reprogram. Frankly, I think there is too much attention paid to the look and feel rather than the desired functionality.

Also, to get the best connections with your hardware, you usually have to use gold-plated contacts. And I've never liked how Girl-Friend is totally "object-oriented".

A year ago, a friend of mine upgraded his version of Girl-Friend to Girl-Friend Plus 1.0, which is a Terminate and Stay Resident version of Girl-Friend.

He discovered that Girl-Friend Plus 1.0 expires within a year if you don't upgrade to Fiancee 1.0. So he did. But soon after that, he had to upgrade to Wife 1.0, which he describes as a "huge resource hog". It has taken up all of his space, so he can't load anything else. One of the primary reasons that he upgraded to Wife 1.0 is that it came bundled with FreeSexPlus 1.0.

Well it turns out that the resource allocation module of Wife 1.0 sometimes prohibits access to FreeSexPlus, particularly the new Plug-Ins he wanted to try. On top of that, Wife 1.0 must be running on a well warmed-up system before he can do anything. Although he did not ask for it, Wife 1.0 came with Mother-In-Law 1.0 which has an automatic pop-up feature that he can't turn off.

Heaven and Hell 
 
In Heaven:
The cooks are French,
The policemen are English,
The mechanics are German,
The lovers are Italian,
The bankers are Swiss.

In Hell:
The cooks are English,
The policemen are German,
The mechanics are French,
The lovers are Swiss,
The bankers are Italian.

In Computer Heaven:
The management is from Intel,
The design and construction is done by Apple,
The marketing is done by Microsoft,
IBM provides the support,
Gateway determines the pricing.

How to Write an E-Mail Report Using America Online:

1. Type in your user name and password and hit the "Sign On"button.

2. Fix yourself a cup of coffee.

3. Watch the next show on the Discovery Channel.

4. Return to your computer. Wait approximately a half hour for AOL to finish signing you on.

5. Avoid impacting table with head as you are immediately signed off. Repeat Steps 1-4.

6. Open your online Mailbox.

7. After selecting the message at the top of your e-mail list,hit the "Delete" button approximately 250 times to get rid of unwanted junk mail and porno chain letters.

8. Hit the "Write Mail" button. Begin writing your e-mail report.

9. Avoid pounding keyboard with forehead as you are signed off halfway through your report. Repeat Steps 1-4.

10. Hit the "Write Mail" button. Begin rewriting your e-mail report.

11. Hit the "Save" button after writing the first two paragraphs.

12. Resist hurling your monitor out the window as AOL informs you that your computer has performed an illegal operation and signs you off.

13. Write your e-mail report using MS-Word or Notepad.

14. Save your e-mail report using MS-Word or Notepad.

15. Highlight the text of your report and hit the "Copy" button.

16. Repeat Steps 1-4. Resist the urge to fill out an application to Harvard College because you have learned so much from the Discovery Channel.

17. Hit the "Write Mail" button. Make sure your cursor is inside the text box for your e-mail.

18. Hit the "Paste" button.

19. Make sure the nearest window is closed.

20. Scream and curse at the top of your lungs because your computer has frozen. Avoid replacing your CD-ROM drive with your keyboard.

21. Call your neighbor and inform him/her that you are coming over to use their computer.

Five cannibals get appointed as programmers in an IT company. During the welcoming ceremony the boss says: "You're all part of our team now. You can earn good money here, and you can go to the company canteen for something to eat. So don't trouble the other employees".

The cannibals promise not to trouble the other employees.

Four weeks later the boss returns and says: "You're all working very hard, and I'm very satisfied with all of you. One of our cleaners has disappeared however. Do any of you know what happened to her?" The cannibals disavow all knowledge of the missing cleaner.